next-forge

next-forge is a production-grade Turborepo monorepo template for Next.js applications, published by Vercel, that scaffolds a full SaaS foundation — six independently deployable apps plus roughly twenty shared packages — from a single init command.

What is next-forge?

next-forge is a Turborepo monorepo starter for Next.js apps, maintained by Vercel and installed with npx next-forge@latest init. Pointed at an empty directory it generates a typed workspace containing six runnable apps (web, app, api, docs, email, storybook) and shared packages covering authentication, database, design system, payments, email, analytics, observability, security, CMS, SEO, AI, webhooks, collaboration, feature flags, cron, storage, internationalization and notifications. Prerequisites are Node.js 20 or newer, a package manager such as Bun (npm, yarn and pnpm also work), and the Stripe CLI for testing webhooks locally.

What makes next-forge stand out?

• Monorepo layout — a apps/ folder of deployable applications and a packages/ folder of shared libraries, all orchestrated by Turborepo; every app deploys independently.
• Six included apps — a marketing site on port 3001, the main application on port 3000, a REST API server with health checks and monitoring, a Mintlify-powered docs site, React Email templates, and a Storybook component environment.
• Authentication — Clerk handles sign-in and session management inside the main app.
• Payments — Stripe drives subscription management, including local webhook testing through the Stripe CLI.
• Styling and design system — Tailwind CSS with TWBlocks on the marketing site, plus a shared component library with dark mode.
• Data layer — a type-safe ORM with migrations (the repository topics list Prisma and Neon).
• Email, analytics and monitoring — transactional email through Resend, Google Analytics for web and PostHog for product analytics, Sentry for error tracking, and BetterStack for logging and uptime monitoring.
• Security and platform extras — Arcjet security with rate limiting and secure headers, plus CMS, SEO metadata/sitemaps/JSON-LD, webhooks, real-time collaboration with live cursors, feature flags, cron jobs, storage and internationalization.

Who should use next-forge?

• Solo founders and small product teams: start a subscription SaaS with billing, auth and a marketing site already wired together instead of assembling each provider by hand.
• Agencies shipping client SaaS products: reuse one opinionated monorepo baseline across projects and swap providers using the documented migration guides.
• Engineering teams standardizing a stack: adopt a shared design system, type-safe database access and observability defaults across several apps in one repository.

What can you do with next-forge?

• Launch a paid product: connect Clerk for sign-in and Stripe for subscriptions, then deploy the marketing site and app as separate Vercel projects.
• Run a public API: use the included API app with health-check and monitoring endpoints as the base for a documented REST service.
• Publish docs and email: ship a Mintlify documentation site and transactional email templates rendered with React Email.
• Iterate on UI in isolation: develop and review components in the bundled Storybook environment.

How does next-forge work?

1. Run npx next-forge@latest init to generate the monorepo.
2. Configure environment variables and create the required service accounts (Clerk, Stripe, Resend and others).
3. Start the development server; each app runs on its own port, with the app on 3000 and web on 3001.

Pricing

next-forge is released under the MIT license and is free to use and modify. Its philosophy is described as "cheap — free to start with services that scale with you", meaning the bundled third-party services (Clerk, Stripe, Resend, Sentry and others) are billed under their own separate plans.

FAQ

What is next-forge?

next-forge is a Turborepo monorepo template for Next.js from Vercel. Running its init command generates six deployable apps — web, app, api, docs, email and storybook — plus shared packages for authentication, database, payments, design system, analytics, security and more.

Is next-forge free?

Yes. next-forge is MIT licensed and free to install and modify. The third-party services it integrates, such as Clerk, Stripe, Resend, Sentry and BetterStack, each have their own pricing and free tiers, so account setup is required before those features work.

What do I need before installing next-forge?

You need Node.js 20 or newer, a package manager such as Bun (npm, yarn and pnpm are also supported), and the Stripe CLI if you want to test Stripe webhooks locally. You also configure environment variables and create service accounts during setup.

Can I swap out the included providers?

The next-forge documentation includes migration guides for swapping providers, so packages such as authentication, payments or email can be replaced with alternatives rather than being permanently locked in.

Alternatives

create-t3-app, which targets a single Next.js app with tRPC and Prisma rather than a multi-app Turborepo monorepo.