What is open-saas?

Open SaaS is a free, open-source starter template for building a Software as a Service (SaaS) application. SaaS means software sold as a subscription and delivered over the internet, like a tool where users sign up, pay monthly, and access the service through their browser. Building a SaaS from scratch requires setting up many common pieces before you can even begin on your actual product: user accounts, email verification, payment processing, file uploads, background tasks, a landing page, and more. Open SaaS provides all of that pre-built and wired together so you can start on your unique idea sooner. The template is built on top of a full-stack framework called Wasp, which combines React (for the browser interface), NodeJS (for the server), and Prisma (for the database) into a single cohesive system. Wasp provides type safety across the entire stack, meaning errors in your data definitions are caught before your code runs rather than discovered in production. It also handles background jobs and deployment to services like Railway or Fly.io through a single command. Beyond Wasp, the template includes several pre-integrated third-party services. Authentication supports email and password sign-up as well as social login through Google, GitHub, Slack, and Microsoft. Payments can be handled through Stripe, Polar.sh, or Lemon Squeezy. File uploads use Amazon S3. Email sending works with SendGrid, MailGun, or a generic SMTP server. A user interface component library called ShadCN UI is included, along with analytics options from Plausible or Google Analytics. An example integration with the OpenAI API is also included. The template is specifically set up for use with AI coding assistants, including custom configuration files that help tools like Claude Code or Cursor understand the project structure and follow consistent conventions. Getting started requires installing the Wasp CLI and running a single command that creates a fresh copy of the template ready for development.