react-starter-kit vs hackathon-starter
Two of the top projects in SaaS boilerplates, side by side: who leads on each score part and who each one suits, then setup, license, activity and what each review found.
react-starter-kit
Full-stack SaaS monorepo template on React 19, tRPC and Cloudflare Workers
hackathon-starter
Node.js and Express boilerplate with auth, API examples and AI samples
Verdict
react-starter-kit ranks higher, 57 to 53. Of the 5 score parts we measure for both, react-starter-kit leads on 3, hackathon-starter on 2.
- Adoptionhackathon-starter leads by 17 points, 80 to 63: a wide gap.
- Freshnesshackathon-starter leads by 24 points, 94 to 70: a wide gap.
- Maintenancereact-starter-kit leads by 10 points, 60 to 50.
- Easy to runreact-starter-kit leads by 33 points, 33 to 0: a wide gap.
- Agent-readyreact-starter-kit leads by 15 points, 85 to 70: a wide gap.
Pick react-starter-kit if you are
TypeScript teams building a SaaS on Cloudflare's edge
- Auth, organizations and Stripe billing are already wired in
- One TypeScript type contract from Drizzle schema through tRPC to the React UI
Pick hackathon-starter if you are
Developers starting a Node.js web app with auth and API integrations
- Local, passkey and eight OAuth 2.0 providers already wired up
- Account flows included: email verification, password reset, 2FA, account deletion
| What we compare | react-starter-kit | hackathon-starter |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 63, popular | 80, popular |
| Freshness | 70, recent | 94, active |
| Maintenance | 60, fair | 50, fair |
| Easy to run | 33, some setup | 0, hard |
| Agent-ready | 85, ready | 70, partly |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 23.7k | 35.3k |
| License | MIT (permissive) | MIT (permissive) |
| Last commit | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Last release | Aug 2015 | Feb 2026 |
| Language | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Docker | No | No |
| GPU | Not needed | Not stated |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Not stated | Not stated |
react-starter-kit
A GitHub template for SaaS apps split into three Cloudflare Workers (Astro marketing site, React 19 SPA, Hono and tRPC API) joined by service bindings. Better Auth handles email OTP, passkeys, Google OAuth and organizations, with optional Stripe subscriptions. Drizzle ORM talks to Neon PostgreSQL through Hyperdrive, provisioned with Terraform.
Who it is for: TypeScript teams building a SaaS on Cloudflare's edge
Strengths
- Auth, organizations and Stripe billing are already wired in
- One TypeScript type contract from Drizzle schema through tRPC to the React UI
- Separate migrate and deploy scripts for staging and production, same script in CI
- A merge-seed skill pulls upstream template changes into your project
Weaknesses
- Tied to Cloudflare Workers, Neon PostgreSQL and Hyperdrive; no alternative runtime documented
- Requires Bun 1.4+ instead of Node.js and npm
- README describes no built-in AI features; they must be added yourself
- Email OTP sign-in needs a verified Resend domain for users other than you
- TypeScript
- Needs Cloudflare Workers, Neon PostgreSQL, Bun, Resend, Stripe (optional), Terraform
- GitHub template
- ⚠️ .env file committed
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
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