Gravity vs supastarter
Both are boilerplates tools. Here is what separates them.
| Gravity | supastarter | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Boilerplates | Boilerplates |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Price from | Paid | Paid |
| Upvotes | 4 | 5 |
| What it does | A Node.js and React SaaS starter with auth, Stripe billing and an admin app. | SaaS scaffolding for Next.js, Nuxt or TanStack Start, with your own database. |
What Gravity is
Gravity is a prebuilt SaaS starter codebase for Node.js and React, sold as a downloadable source code package rather than a hosted service. It ships in two architectures: a Node.js build with a separate backend and frontend, and a Next.js build that runs as one unified application. Every published plan bundles the Node.js server, a React web client, a React Native mobile client, an Astro website template and Mission Control, the admin dashboard covering user management, feedback, events and logs. The licence terms matter as much as the feature list. Plans are one-time payments: Starter at 199 US dollars, Pro at 299 and Elite at 499. Each permits use in between one and three commercial applications depending on which plan was bought, so the number of products you may ship is fixed at purchase. Updates are included for one year from purchase and delivered through a private GitHub repository that buyers merge into their own project. Renewing that window costs 195 US dollars per year if you renew before it expires and 250 US dollars per year afterwards. Refunds are not issued under any circumstances, and filing a chargeback terminates the licence and permanently disables the account. Only the developers covered by the licence may use the code for development work, and reselling, renting, leasing, sublicensing or redistributing the source is forbidden. You may deploy Gravity inside applications owned and operated by your own clients, which makes it usable for agency work, but you may not build a product with the same or substantially the same primary function as Gravity itself. Billing is implemented on Stripe and covers subscriptions, free accounts, seat billing and usage billing, with 3D Secure handled for European cards. Free trials are set through a trial period value on the Stripe plan and apply only at first signup, not on plan upgrades. Authorisation ships with five permission levels (master, owner, admin, user and developer), and only the owner role can edit billing details, close the account or create and delete API keys. The REST API accepts both JWT bearer tokens and API keys sent as Basic authentication, and keys only work on endpoints that declare a scope such as account read or user read. One decision worth weighing: API keys are stored in the database in plain text so that a user can retrieve a lost key. Database access goes through Knex, with MySQL, Postgres and MongoDB named in the stack. The web client uses React, Vite, Tailwind, Shadcn and Radix UI, and social sign on uses Passport.js in the Node.js build and Arctic in the Next.js build. Transactional email goes through Nodemailer with Mailgun as the default transport, and the deployment guide names Heroku and Digital Ocean. A Custom plan adds between one and five bespoke features, deployment assistance and transfer of IP ownership, but carries no published price.
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.