The $99 ShipFast alternative with an agent layer

Pick ShipFast if you want a proven paid kit, a big maker community, and the option of MongoDB or plain JavaScript. Pick Agentic Boilerplate if you want to pay $99 once instead of $199, choose each service yourself, and give your coding agent rules, skills and guard hooks on day one. It's free during launch. Both get you a landing page, sign-in and checkout fast.

Every ShipFast fact below comes from its own site, checked on October 4, 2026.

At a glance

	ShipFast	Agentic Boilerplate
Price	$199 Starter or $249 All-in, one-time. List prices $299 and $349 (per its pricing, October 4, 2026)	$99 once, lifetime access and updates. Free during launch
License	Proprietary. Unlimited projects. No reselling or redistributing the boilerplate	Proprietary. Unlimited projects. No reselling the boilerplate
Framework	Next.js, App Router (Pages Router docs kept separately). JavaScript or TypeScript	Next.js 16, App Router. TypeScript only
Auth	NextAuth with Google OAuth and magic links, or Supabase	Better Auth, Clerk or Supabase Auth
Payments	Stripe or Lemon Squeezy	Stripe, Polar, Lemon Squeezy or Dodo Payments
Database	MongoDB or Supabase	Postgres on Neon or Supabase, with Drizzle or Prisma
Email	Mailgun or Resend	Resend, Mailgun or Postmark
Agent setup files	Its home page says it is "built for" AI tools. Its home and docs pages name no CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md	CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, path-scoped rules, skills, subagents, guard hooks, solution docs, .mcp.json
Admin panel	Not listed on its home page	Yes: users, bans, impersonation, audit log
Design systems	"Components & animations"	31 design systems
Community	Discord community and a leaderboard	None yet

What ShipFast does well

• Lots of users. Its home page says "8430 makers ship faster" (October 4, 2026). That is a lot of people who hit the same bugs before you did.
• A community. Its pricing lists a Discord community and a revenue leaderboard. We have neither.
• JavaScript or TypeScript. Not everyone wants types. ShipFast ships a repo for each. We ship TypeScript only.
• MongoDB. If your data already lives in Mongo, ShipFast supports it. We are Postgres only.
• Lifetime updates, plus "$1,210 worth of discounts" on other tools, per its pricing.
• One clear path. NextAuth, two payment options, two databases. Fewer choices, less to read.
• A course bundle. ShipFast plus its CodeFast course is $299 (list $648) per its pricing. Good if you are learning while you ship.

ShipFast is a good product. If its stack fits yours, it will save you time.

Where Agentic Boilerplate is different

$99, once

• One price: $99 for lifetime access and updates. No tiers, no subscription.
• That is about half ShipFast's $199 Starter. It is also the lowest price of the paid kits we compare: ShipFast, supastarter and MakerKit.
• The license is proprietary, like ShipFast's. Build as many projects as you want and ship what you build. You can't resell or redistribute the boilerplate itself.
• Same kind of deal as ShipFast. Lower price, and you pick the stack.

You pick the stack

• 26 batteries across auth, payments, database, ORM, email, storage, analytics, errors, support, blog, AI and admin.
• One per category, or none. See what each one ships: Better Auth, Stripe, Polar.
• Every pair you can pick was installed, typechecked, built and booted together. Untested pairs are greyed out, with the reason.

You can read the repo before you download it

• /stack/indie-saas shows the file tree, CLAUDE.md, the agents and the design for the Indie SaaS preset.
• No email, no purchase. Read it, then decide.

Your agent gets a setup, not a blank page

The agent layer is generated for the stack you pick. The Indie SaaS repo ships:

• 30 rules, most scoped to paths. A billing rule loads only when the agent reads a billing file. Your marketing page edits never pay for it.
• 28 skills. Slash commands like /verify, /edit-pricing and /test-webhook.
• 7 subagents. pr-reviewer, security-auditor, documentarian and more.
• 7 guard hooks. block-destructive refuses rm -rf, force pushes and git reset --hard. env-leak-detector stops the agent from printing your .env.local.
• 74 solution docs. Known mistakes, written down before you make them. Browse every one in the cookbook.

bun run verify:hooks runs each hook against block and allow cases, so you know the guards work. Hooks are wired for Claude Code. Codex and Cursor get the same rules and skills in their own formats.

It boots with no keys

• The landing page, /pricing, /terms and /privacy render before you add a single key.
• docs/onboard.md lists every env var for your picks and where to get it.

When to pick ShipFast instead

• You want MongoDB.
• You want to write JavaScript, not TypeScript.
• You want a Discord full of makers to ask questions in.
• You want a product thousands of people already use. We are new in 2026, with few public testimonials so far.
• You want someone to answer you. We have no paid support and no community chat. You get email through contact.

Things we don't have, full stop: teams and organizations, i18n, MongoDB, and any framework other than Next.js.

How to try it

From a terminal:

npm create agentic-boilerplate@latest my-app

Or bunx create-agentic-boilerplate my-app, or pnpm create agentic-boilerplate my-app.

Prefer clicking? Open /build. Pick batteries, watch the file tree and CLAUDE.md change on every click, then download the zip.

New to agent setup? Read the CLAUDE.md template and the Claude Code setup for Next.js guide.

Still shopping? See the best Next.js boilerplates, or compare us with supastarter and MakerKit.

FAQ

Is there a free ShipFast alternative?

Yes. MakerKit Lite, the Next.js SaaS Starter, ixartz SaaS-Boilerplate, Open SaaS and create-t3-app are all free and MIT. Our roundup compares them. Agentic Boilerplate is free during launch, then $99 once.

What does Agentic Boilerplate cost?

Free during launch. Then $99 once for lifetime access and updates. One price, no tiers, no subscription. ShipFast is $199 or $249 one-time, per its pricing on October 4, 2026.

Is Agentic Boilerplate open source?

No. It is closed source, like ShipFast and supastarter. You get every file of the repo you generate, to read and change. You can't resell or redistribute the boilerplate. Want an MIT kit? See the free ones in our roundup.

Is ShipFast worth it?

If its stack fits yours, $199 one-time is cheap next to a week of wiring auth and Stripe. If you want Postgres, a choice of providers, or an agent layer in the repo, ours is $99. Read a full repo at /stack/indie-saas before you pay anyone.

Does Agentic Boilerplate support MongoDB or JavaScript?

No. It is TypeScript and Postgres only, on Neon or Supabase, with Drizzle or Prisma. If you need MongoDB or plain JavaScript, ShipFast is the better fit.

I already use ShipFast. Can I still get the agent layer?

Not as a merge. Our generator writes new repos only. You can copy the ideas, though. The CLAUDE.md template shows the file we generate, line by line, and works in any Next.js repo.