Open SaaS is a free, open source SaaS starter template built on React, Node.js, and Prisma — a ShipFast alternative that ships auth, Stripe and Lemon Squeezy payments, an admin dashboard, AI, and file uploads out of the box, with no license fee.

What is Open SaaS?

Open SaaS is a free, open source starter template for building SaaS applications, built on React, Node.js, and Prisma and powered by the Wasp full-stack framework. It ships the parts every SaaS needs — authentication, payments, an admin dashboard, email, and file uploads — so you start with a working product instead of an empty repo.

What is Open SaaS best for?

Developers and small teams who want to launch a subscription product quickly without paying for a boilerplate or wiring auth, billing, and admin tooling together from scratch. It suits people comfortable with React and TypeScript who value owning all of their code and deploying anywhere, with no per-seat fees or vendor lock-in.

What can Open SaaS do?

Full-stack authentication with email verification plus Google, GitHub, Slack, and Microsoft sign-in
Payments and subscriptions through Stripe, Polar.sh, or Lemon Squeezy, with checkout and webhooks pre-wired
Admin dashboard with charts, tables, and user management
OpenAI integration with function calling as a working AI example
File uploads via AWS S3 presigned URLs
Transactional email through SendGrid, Mailgun, or SMTP, plus cron-scheduled jobs
A Markdown blog and landing page built with Astro, and analytics via Plausible or Google Analytics
End-to-end tests with Playwright and a GitHub Actions CI pipeline

Where does Open SaaS fall short?

It is built on Wasp, a newer React/Node meta-framework rather than plain Next.js, so app structure, routing, auth, and background jobs are declared in Wasp’s config file and conventions. That means a learning curve of a few days, and Wasp’s ecosystem and community are much smaller than Next.js — fewer third-party examples and Stack Overflow answers when you hit an edge case.

Because the framework generates and wires much of the boilerplate for you, you trade some low-level control for that automation. Teams that need to drop in arbitrary Next.js patterns or an existing Next.js codebase will fit better with a Next.js-based kit.

Is Open SaaS free?

Yes — Open SaaS is 100% free and released under the MIT license, with no license fee, no per-seat pricing, and no upsell tier. You own the code and can use it for commercial products. Your only costs are the usual ones: hosting, and any third-party services you enable (Stripe fees, an email provider, OpenAI usage).

What does Open SaaS replace?

It’s a free, open source stand-in for paid SaaS boilerplates like ShipFast, which sell a Next.js starter kit under a one-time commercial license. Open SaaS covers the same launch-day essentials — auth, payments, email, admin, landing page — without buying a license or accepting closed source code.

FAQ

Is Open SaaS open source? Yes. The full template is on GitHub under the permissive MIT license, and the underlying Wasp framework is open source too. You can read, modify, and ship the code commercially with no restrictions.

Can I self-host Open SaaS for free? Yes. It has no managed tier to pay for — you deploy it yourself to any host (Railway, Fly.io, a VPS) and there’s no vendor lock-in. You only pay for hosting and any external services you turn on.

Is Open SaaS a good ShipFast alternative? For React and TypeScript developers, yes — it matches ShipFast’s core features (auth, Stripe/Lemon Squeezy payments, admin, email) at no cost. The tradeoff is learning Wasp instead of working in a plain Next.js app.

What do I need to run Open SaaS? Node.js, the Wasp CLI, and a PostgreSQL database. Payments, email, AI, and file uploads each need their own third-party account (Stripe, SendGrid/Mailgun, OpenAI, AWS S3), but you can enable only the ones you use.