create-t3-app vs supastarter
Both are boilerplates tools. Here is what separates them.
| create-t3-app | supastarter | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Boilerplates | Boilerplates |
| Pricing model | open-source | paid |
| Price from | Open source | Paid |
| Upvotes | 11 | 5 |
| What it does | A typesafe Next.js stack scaffolded by answering four questions. | SaaS scaffolding for Next.js, Nuxt or TanStack Start, with your own database. |
What create-t3-app is
Create T3 App is a command line tool that scaffolds a new TypeScript web project with a chosen set of libraries already wired together. It is a scaffolding tool rather than a framework, and the distinction matters: once a project has been initialised it belongs to whoever created it, with no mandatory updates to follow afterwards. The libraries on offer make up the T3 Stack. Next.js handles the application itself, TypeScript is used throughout for typesafety, NextAuth.js covers authentication, Tailwind CSS handles styling, tRPC is used for client development, and database work goes through Prisma or Drizzle. Typesafety is the organising principle of the selection rather than a feature bolted on afterwards. The combination is opinionated: these are the libraries the project has settled on, and the scaffolding wires them to work together rather than leaving the connections to be written by hand. Choices are made at scaffolding time. The /app directory structure is one of the options, and the project regards it as mature enough for production use. Some .js files remain in the generated output because not every framework in the stack supports TypeScript configuration files, which is a deliberate compromise rather than an oversight. Internationalisation is not included by default. Instead of building it in, the project maintains a reference repository showing how to add i18n with next-i18next. That fits its wider position, which is that people learn the stack by building with it rather than by working through extensive preliminary material first. Create T3 App is open source and the applications it produces are self-hostable. It draws on Create Next App and Astro's CLI, and its involvement ends once the project has been generated: what comes out is an ordinary Next.js codebase that can be changed, deployed and maintained on its own terms. The tool has a narrow remit. It builds new T3 Stack projects and does not try to be a runtime, a hosting platform or a component library, so anything beyond the initial setup is handled by the libraries themselves rather than by Create T3 App.
What supastarter is
supastarter is a SaaS starter kit: a commercial codebase you buy once and build your own product on top of, instead of assembling accounts, billing and admin screens from scratch. Buyers choose between Next.js, Nuxt and TanStack Start versions of the kit, and a working demo of the Next.js version is published at demo.supastarter.dev. Authentication is built on better-auth and covers passwords, passkeys, magic links, OAuth and two factor authentication, along with a forgot and reset password flow. Multi-tenant organisations are modelled from the start, with Owner, Admin and Member roles, email invitations for new members, and the option to make organisations required, hidden, disabled or removed if your product has no use for them. There is also a super admin role with user impersonation, and an in-app notification centre with per-user preferences. Billing covers subscriptions, one-time payments, usage-based and seat-based pricing, with checkout, webhooks, trial periods and a self-serve customer portal already wired up. Five payment providers are supported: Lemon Squeezy, Stripe, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments. The rest of the stack leaves the significant choices open. The data layer supports a choice of database and ORM, with Prisma and Drizzle both working. The API is built on Hono with typed permissions, OpenAPI specifications and a reusable client. The interface uses Tailwind CSS and Base UI, is shadcn/ui compatible and includes dark mode. File storage works with any S3-compatible provider through presigned uploads. Local development runs on Docker Compose with a local PostgreSQL database, MinIO standing in for S3 and mail printed to the console, and the finished application deploys to Vercel and other serverless hosts or runs under Docker. Playwright end to end tests, GitHub Actions and Sentry monitoring are configured already. Surrounding the application are a marketing site, an MDX blog, Fumadocs documentation with full-text search, legal pages and internationalisation with a language switcher and translatable mail templates. For AI work the kit includes a chatbot example and several AI adapters, and the codebase follows the AGENTS.md and Agent Skills specifications so coding agents can extend it. Licences are one-time purchases with lifetime updates rather than subscriptions. Solo costs 299 US dollars for one developer seat and unlimited personal projects used commercially. Startup costs 799 US dollars for up to five seats and unlimited team projects. Agency costs 1,499 US dollars for up to ten seats and unlimited client projects, and adds white-label rights and a private Discord channel with the founders. Startup and Agency each include a 60 minute consulting call, which can otherwise be bought on its own for 149 US dollars. Those are the list prices, and a parity purchasing power discount is offered to buyers in some countries.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.