hackathon-starter vs open-saas
Two of the top saas boilerplates, side by side: score, setup, license, activity and what each review found.
hackathon-starter
Node.js and Express boilerplate with auth, API examples and AI samples
open-saas
Wasp SaaS template with auth, three payment providers, OpenAI demo app
| What we compare | hackathon-starter | open-saas |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 75, popular | 63, popular |
| Freshness | 95, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 50, fair | 61, fair |
| Easy to run | 0, hard | 0, hard |
| Agent-ready | 70, partly | 0, none |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 35.2k | 16.1k |
| License | MIT (permissive) | MIT (permissive) |
| Last commit | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Last release | Feb 2026 | Jul 2026 |
| Language | JavaScript | MDX |
| Docker | No | No |
| GPU | Not stated | Not needed |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Not stated | Not stated |
hackathon-starter
Hackathon Starter is an Express and MongoDB web app template with local, passkey and OAuth 2.0 sign-in, account management, 2FA, a contact form and file upload. It ships examples for third-party APIs such as Stripe, Twilio and Google Maps, plus AI samples: a ReAct agent with tool calling and MongoDB session persistence, and RAG with embedding caching. Views are server-rendered Pug with Bootstrap 5.3 and Sass.
Who it is for: Developers starting a Node.js web app with auth and API integrations
Strengths
- Local, passkey and eight OAuth 2.0 providers already wired up
- Account flows included: email verification, password reset, 2FA, account deletion
- Many API integration examples: Stripe, Twilio, Google Drive, Maps, Steam
- Live demo and a production checklist (PROD_CHECKLIST.md)
Weaknesses
- Requires MongoDB; no other database option is documented
- No Dockerfile or compose file detected
- AI examples are a small part of a general web boilerplate
- Most integrations need separate API keys and OAuth app setup
- JavaScript, LangChain, Groq, Hugging Face, GPT-OSS
- Needs MongoDB, Node.js LTS 24, SMTP provider
- env example file
- sign-in: Passport
open-saas
A Wasp (React, Node, Prisma) SaaS template: email-verified and social auth, Stripe, Polar or Lemon Squeezy payments, cron jobs, S3 uploads, SendGrid, Mailgun or SMTP email, an admin dashboard, an Astro Starlight docs and blog site, Playwright end-to-end tests and an example OpenAI function-calling app. Scaffold with wasp new -t saas and deploy to Railway or Fly with one command. For teams that accept Wasp for a complete SaaS base.
Who it is for: Teams that accept Wasp for a complete SaaS base
Strengths
- Three payment providers and three email providers are switchable
- Playwright e2e tests, admin dashboard and docs site included
- One-command deploy to Railway or Fly
- Live demo at opensaas.sh and a dedicated docs site
Weaknesses
- Wasp is the framework; its config DSL and release cadence become your dependency
- AI part is one OpenAI example app; no usage metering or credits
- Pulling template updates after forking is a documented manual process
- No Docker files
- MDX, openai
- Needs wasp-cli, postgres, stripe-or-polar-or-lemonsqueezy, openai-api-key, aws-s3, email-provider