Every few weeks an indie hacker asks the same question: "I'm shipping a SaaS — which starter template should I buy?"
This is the EasyStarter team's honest side-by-side comparison of the four templates that come up most often. No marketing copy — every pro and con is from real projects we shipped, debugged or migrated.
TL;DR
- ShipFast — Next.js + MongoDB. The OG indie SaaS template. Best marketing copy, oldest stack.
- Makerkit — Next.js + Supabase. Most enterprise-friendly. Highest learning curve.
- Supastarter — Next.js + Supabase + Turbo. Best multi-app + i18n story. Western-only mindset.
- EasyStarter — TanStack Start + Cloudflare + D1. The one designed for shipping global SaaS at $0/month, with iOS/Android sharing 80% of the web code.
Comparison dimensions
We grade on 9 axes indie developers actually care about:
- Frontend framework & routing
- Backend architecture & deployment
- Database
- Monthly fixed cost (at 10k MAU)
- Mobile (iOS/Android)
- Globalization (payments, auth, China)
- AI / Vibe Coding friendliness
- Lifetime license vs subscription
- Community & update cadence
1. Frontend framework & routing
| Template | Framework | Routing | Type safety |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | Next.js (Pages/App) | File-based | Decent |
| Makerkit | Next.js (App) | File-based | Strong |
| Supastarter | Next.js (App) | File-based | Strong |
| EasyStarter | TanStack Start | File-based | End-to-end (oRPC + Zod) |
Next.js wins on ecosystem but App Router's server components add real cognitive overhead for solo devs. TanStack Start feels more like "React Router + Vite + type-safe loaders" — a faster onramp for frontend engineers.
2. Backend & deployment
| Template | Backend | Default deploy | Cold start |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | Next.js API Routes | Vercel | ~300 ms |
| Makerkit | Next.js + Supabase | Vercel + Supabase | ~300 ms |
| Supastarter | Next.js + Supabase | Vercel + Supabase | ~300 ms |
| EasyStarter | Hono + Workers | Cloudflare Workers | < 50 ms |
V8 isolates on Cloudflare Workers have effectively no cold start. For low-traffic SaaS that's a 30%+ P95 improvement over Node-based functions.
3. Database
| Template | DB | ORM | Backups |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | MongoDB (Mongoose) | Mongoose | DIY |
| Makerkit | Postgres (Supabase) | Drizzle/Prisma | Built-in |
| Supastarter | Postgres (Supabase) | Drizzle | Built-in |
| EasyStarter | Cloudflare D1 | Drizzle | Built-in |
ShipFast is the only one still on MongoDB. For SaaS workloads with strong relational shape, the long-term maintenance bill on Mongo isn't worth it. The other three are SQL — much easier to add reports, indexes and analytics down the road.
4. Monthly fixed cost (at 10k MAU)
The most underrated dimension. Baseline: 10k monthly actives, ~50k daily requests, 500MB database:
| Template | Compute | Database | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | Vercel Pro | MongoDB Atlas | ~$20 + $9 = $29 |
| Makerkit | Vercel Pro | Supabase Pro | ~$20 + $25 = $45 |
| Supastarter | Vercel Pro | Supabase Pro | ~$20 + $25 = $45 |
| EasyStarter | Workers | D1 | $0 (free tier) |
Cloudflare Workers' free tier is 100k requests/day. D1 gives you 5M reads / 100k writes / 5GB storage. For early SaaS that's 6–12 months of zero infra cost.
5. Mobile
| Template | iOS / Android | Code reuse |
|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | None | 0% |
| Makerkit | Pro tier has Expo | ~50% |
| Supastarter | Has Expo | ~60% |
| EasyStarter | Expo + shared monorepo | ~80% |
EasyStarter pushes i18n, auth, the oRPC client and business logic into shared packages, so the React Native app uses the same schema and API client as the web app.
6. Globalization (especially China)
This is where the other three break down hard if your audience is global.
| China phone auth (Aliyun) | Resend deliverability | Chinese docs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | No | Yes | No |
| Makerkit | No | Yes | No |
| Supastarter | No | Yes | No |
| EasyStarter | Built-in | Yes | Complete |
If you're targeting Chinese users — or you're a Chinese dev shipping globally — EasyStarter is currently the only template with the full pipeline wired up.
7. AI / Vibe Coding friendliness
All four claim to be "AI friendly." The real test:
- Is there a
CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.mddescribing project conventions? - Are there generation prompts/CLI tools for new pages/routes?
- Is the type system strong enough that the AI can't easily write runtime bugs?
| Template | CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md | Code generators | Type strictness |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | No | None | Medium |
| Makerkit | No | Has CLI | High |
| Supastarter | No | Has CLI | High |
| EasyStarter | Yes, tuned | Yes + Skills | Very high |
EasyStarter is specifically tuned for "let Cursor/Claude Code write 90% of the code" — every Biome rule and oRPC convention is captured in CLAUDE.md.
8. Lifetime vs subscription
| Template | Model | Price | Lifetime updates |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShipFast | One-time | ~$299 | Yes |
| Makerkit | One-time | $299 – $999 | Yes |
| Supastarter | One-time | $199 – $599 | Yes |
| EasyStarter | One-time | See pricing | Yes |
All lifetime. The differences are team seats and premium modules.
9. Community & cadence
ShipFast has the largest community and the most Twitter marketing. Makerkit has the deepest docs. Supastarter ships on the most predictable cadence. EasyStarter has the most active Chinese-language community (WeChat groups, Xiaohongshu).
How to choose
- Western dev, B2B SaaS, team of 3+ → Makerkit
- Need a marketing page + Stripe subscription shipped this weekend → ShipFast
- Heavy multi-tenant, multi-language, Postgres-leaning → Supastarter
- Shipping global SaaS (especially with China), want $0 infra, want iOS + Android from day one → EasyStarter
What we didn't compare
- DIY (NextAuth + Drizzle + Stripe glued together) — cheap, but the first 4 weeks are environment plumbing
- Region-specific templates (e.g. Tencent Cloud starters) — different audience
Closing thought
A template is a way to skip 4–8 weeks of plumbing. Pick anything — just stop hand-rolling auth, payments, email and deployment for the Nth time.
If you've decided to try EasyStarter, Web quickstart → is the 15-minute path to a running dev server.
Keep reading
Cloudflare Workers vs Vercel vs Supabase: Cost & Latency for Global SaaS
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Why EasyStarter Has a Dedicated China Edition — Compared to the Cloudflare Version
Why a Cloudflare-based SaaS template isn't enough for mainland China users. The real, structural advantages of EasyStarter's China edition (Aliyun + ZPay) over the Cloudflare main branch — compliance, payments, latency, data residency.
Next.js or TanStack Start? A Picking Guide for Indie SaaS in 2026
An honest side-by-side of Next.js and TanStack Start on SSR mental model, deployment, Cloudflare compatibility, type safety and ecosystem — with a concrete recommendation for indie SaaS.
