Next.js starter kits for freelance developers
You bill by the project. Anything that shortens the project without lowering the price is margin.
What this is
If you build client projects on Next.js, a starter kit is a margin decision, not a learning one. You already know how to wire auth. The question is whether you want to bill four hours for it on every engagement, or two hours once and keep the difference.
The licence that makes this work: unlimited personal and commercial projects, one payment, no renewal. Client work is commercial use.
The arithmetic
Say you charge $70/hour and a typical project needs auth, a payments integration, and a basic dashboard shell.
| Hours without a kit | Hours with one | |
|---|---|---|
| Auth, adapter, session persistence | 4–6 | 1 |
| Payments plus a webhook that is actually idempotent | 5–8 | 1–2 |
| Schema, migrations, roles | 3–5 | 1 |
| Total | 12–19 | 3–4 |
At $70/hour that is roughly $630–$1,050 of work replaced by a $59 purchase you reuse on every subsequent engagement. The saving on the second project is pure margin, because you have already paid.
This only holds if you bill fixed-price or by project. If you bill hourly and your client is happy to pay for the hours, a kit reduces your revenue. Know which one you are.
The part most licences get wrong, and where ours is ambiguous
Most boilerplate licences restrict you to your own projects, or charge a separate "agency" or "team" tier for client work — this is the clause worth checking before you buy anything, ours included.
Ours permits unlimited commercial projects, and prohibits redistributing, reselling or publishing the source as your own product.
Between those two sentences sits a real question: a contract requiring you to assign all source to the client. Building their application with the kit is plainly commercial use. Handing them the kit as a standalone deliverable is closer to the thing the licence prohibits. If your contract has a full source-assignment clause, email hello@cheapstack.dev before signing and get the answer in writing. It is a two-line email and it removes the only genuine risk here.
What to buy
The SaaS Boilerplate at $59 is the one that carries client work: four auth providers, Stripe and Polar webhooks that verify signatures, organizations with roles and seat limits, an admin area, and a Playwright suite you can run in front of a client.
The Pro Bundle at $79 adds the landing page kit and the smaller scaffolds. For $20 more than the flagship alone, it is the obvious buy if you expect varied briefs.
Where to go next
- ShipFast vs CheapStack — including where ShipFast is the better pick
- MakerKit vs CheapStack — MakerKit is stronger on MFA, passkeys and i18n
- Build a SaaS for $100/month — the running costs you will quote the client
Questions
Can I use a kit on client work?
Yes. The licence covers unlimited commercial projects, which includes work you are paid to do for a client. What it prohibits is redistributing, reselling or publishing the source code as your own product.
Do I need a separate licence per client?
No. One purchase covers unlimited projects. There is no per-project, per-client or per-seat fee, and nothing renews.
Can I hand the source code to the client at the end?
Delivering a finished application you built with a kit is ordinary commercial use. Handing over the unmodified kit itself as a deliverable is closer to redistribution. If a client contract requires full source transfer, email hello@cheapstack.dev before you sign and get the position in writing.