Important
This repo is a work-in-progress. Please open an issue if you see something wrong!
This is a starter template for building a SaaS application using Next.js with support for authentication, Stripe integration for payments, and a dashboard for logged-in users.
Demo: https://next-saas-start.vercel.app/
Wait, why make this?
In 2020, I made a course called "React 2025" which showed how to build a SaaS application with Next.js, Stripe, and other tools.
Well, it's almost 2025 and React 19 has brought so many amazing new features I didn't predict! This repo is a demonstration of the latest React and Next.js patterns. These patterns can drastically simplify some common tasks in building your SaaS, like building forms, talking to your database, and more.
For example, React now has built in hooks like useActionState
to handle inline form errors and pending states. React Server Actions can replace a lot of boilerplate code needed to call an API Route from the client-side. And finally, the React use
hook combined with Next.js makes it incredibly easy to build a powerful useUser()
hook.
We're able to fetch the user from our Postgres database in the root layout, but not await the Promise
. Instead, we forward the Promise
to a React context provider, where we can "unwrap" it and awaited the streamed in data. This means we can have the best of both worlds: easy code to fetch data from our database (e.g. getUser()
) and a React hook we can use in Client Components (e.g. useUser()
).
Fun fact: the majority of the UI for this application was built with v0 🤯 More details here if you want to learn about this repo.
- Marketing landing page (
/
) with animated Terminal element - Pricing page (
/pricing
) which connects to Stripe Checkout - Dashboard pages with CRUD operations on users/teams
- Basic RBAC with Owner and Member roles
- Subscription management with Stripe Customer Portal
- Email/password authentication with JWTs stored to cookies
- Global middleware to protect logged-in routes
- Local middleware to protect Server Actions or validate Zod schemas
- Activity logging system for any user events
git clone https://github.com/leerob/next-saas-starter
cd next-saas-starter
pnpm install
pnpm db:setup
pnpm db:migrate
pnpm db:seed
Running the setup script will create your .env
file locally.
Once you have set up the environment variables and installed dependencies, run the development server:
pnpm dev
Then, also listen for Stripe webhooks locally through their CLI:
stripe listen --forward-to localhost:3000/api/stripe/webhook
Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser to see the app in action.
To test Stripe payments, use the following test card details:
- Card Number:
4242 4242 4242 4242
- Expiration: Any future date
- CVC: Any 3-digit number
When you're ready to deploy your SaaS application to production, follow these steps:
- Go to the Stripe Dashboard and create a new webhook for your production environment.
- Set the endpoint URL to your production API route (e.g.,
https://yourdomain.com/api/stripe/webhook
). - Select the events you want to listen for (e.g.,
checkout.session.completed
,customer.subscription.updated
).
- Push your code to a GitHub repository.
- Connect your repository to Vercel and deploy it.
- Follow the Vercel deployment process, which will guide you through setting up your project.
In your Vercel project settings (or during deployment), add all the necessary environment variables. Make sure to update the values for the production environment, including:
BASE_URL
: Set this to your production domain.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
: Use your Stripe secret key for the production environment.STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET
: Use the webhook secret from the production webhook you created in step 1.DATABASE_URL
: Set this to your production database URL.AUTH_SECRET
: Set this to a random string.openssl rand -base64 32
will generate one.
While this template is intentionally minimal and to be used as a learning resource, there are other paid versions in the community which are more full-featured: