Best Tech Stack for Building a SaaS as a Solo Developer

I've built three SaaS products as a solo developer. Two of them are still making money. The third one died, but not because of the tech stack. It died because nobody wanted it.

The stack, though? That part I got right. After years of experimenting, I've landed on a combination that lets me ship fast, stay sane, and keep costs under control. Here's exactly what I'd use if I were starting a new SaaS today.

The Recommended Stack

Why This Stack Works for Solo Developers

Three words. Speed, simplicity, cost.

You're one person. You don't have a DevOps engineer, a frontend team, or a DBA. Every tool you add to your stack is another thing you have to maintain, debug, and keep updated. This stack keeps the moving parts minimal while giving you everything a SaaS needs out of the box.

I ran my first SaaS on Django with a separate React frontend, separate server, separate CI/CD pipeline. It worked fine, but I was spending 30% of my time on infrastructure instead of features. When I consolidated to Next.js on Vercel, that dropped to maybe 5%.

Frontend: Next.js

Next.js is the default choice for a reason. The App Router with server components means you write less client-side JavaScript. Pages load faster. SEO works out of the box. And you get API routes baked in, so you don't need a separate backend for most SaaS features.

The ecosystem is massive. Need a component library? shadcn/ui. Need forms? React Hook Form. Need tables? TanStack Table. Every problem has a well-tested solution.

Alternatives worth considering. SvelteKit if you want something lighter and enjoy Svelte's syntax. Remix if you're a React purist who cares about web standards. But honestly, Next.js has the most tutorials, the most Stack Overflow answers, and the biggest hiring pool if you ever want to bring someone on.

Backend: Keep It Simple

Here's my hot take. For most SaaS products, you don't need a separate backend. Next.js API routes handle authentication, database queries, webhooks, and business logic just fine. Pair them with Prisma for type-safe database access and you've got a backend that's genuinely pleasant to work with.

I used to think "real" applications needed Django or Express as a dedicated API layer. After building two profitable SaaS products entirely within Next.js, I can tell you that's just not true for solo work. The cognitive overhead of managing two codebases, two deployments, and two sets of dependencies is not worth it until you hit real scaling problems. And you probably won't for a long time.

If you genuinely need a separate backend (heavy background jobs, complex data processing), go with Django or FastAPI. But start simple first.

Database + Auth + Hosting

Database. PostgreSQL through Supabase gives you a managed database with a generous free tier, real-time subscriptions if you need them, and a dashboard for quick data inspection. I used to manage my own Postgres instances on DigitalOcean. Never again. The time I spent on backups, updates, and connection pooling was absurd for a solo operation.

Auth. Supabase Auth handles email/password, OAuth (Google, GitHub, etc.), and magic links. If you want something more polished with pre-built UI components, Clerk is excellent but costs money once you pass the free tier. The golden rule here is to never build auth yourself. I tried once. It took three weeks and I still had security holes.

Hosting. Vercel's free tier is enough to launch and validate your SaaS. You push to GitHub, it deploys. That's it. No Dockerfiles, no CI/CD configs, no server management. When you need to scale, their paid plans are reasonable for the time you save.

What I'd Skip

Microservices. You're one person. One service is enough. I promise.

Kubernetes. Unless your SaaS is already making $10k/month and you need custom infrastructure, K8s is overkill. I use it for one of my projects now, but I wish I'd waited longer before adopting it.

GraphQL. REST is fine. GraphQL adds complexity that doesn't pay off until you have multiple frontend clients with wildly different data needs. A SaaS dashboard doesn't need it.

Redis. Not at first. Postgres handles caching patterns well enough for early-stage products. Add Redis when you actually have performance bottlenecks, not before.

Self-hosted anything. Managed services exist so you can focus on your product instead of your infrastructure. Use them.

Getting Started

Here's what I'd do this week if I were starting fresh.

1. Spin up the project. Run npx create-next-app@latest with TypeScript and Tailwind enabled. Add Prisma with npx prisma init.

2. Set up Supabase. Create a project, grab the connection string, and wire it into Prisma. Set up Supabase Auth or Clerk for login.

3. Build one core feature. Not the landing page. Not the settings page. The one thing your SaaS actually does. Get it working end-to-end in the first weekend.

4. Deploy to Vercel. Connect your GitHub repo. Push. It's live. Show it to five people and ask if they'd pay for it.

5. Add Stripe when someone says yes. Not before. Stripe integration takes a day, and there's no point wiring up payments until you've validated demand.

The best tech stack for a SaaS is the one that gets you to paying customers fastest. This combination does that without locking you into anything you can't change later. Ship first, optimize second.