Choosing the right tech stack for your SaaS in 2025

Choosing your tech stack is one of the most critical decisions you'll make for your SaaS product. Pick the wrong technologies and you'll spend years fighting technical debt. Pick the right ones and your product will scale effortlessly.

After building dozens of SaaS products, here's our 2025 guide to choosing technologies that will serve you for years to come.

The Framework Decision

Your framework choice impacts everything: development speed, performance, developer experience, and long-term maintainability.

Next.js: The Safe Default

For most SaaS products, Next.js is the obvious choice in 2025:

• Full-stack framework with API routes
• Excellent performance with server components
• Built-in SEO optimization
• Huge ecosystem and community
• Easy deployment on Vercel

We use Next.js for 90% of our projects because it handles everything from simple landing pages to complex multi-tenant applications.

When to Consider Alternatives

Remix makes sense for read-heavy applications with complex data requirements. SvelteKit is excellent for performance-critical consumer apps. But for B2B SaaS, stick with Next.js.

Database Selection

Your database choice affects scalability, performance, and development velocity.

PostgreSQL: The Reliable Foundation

PostgreSQL (via Supabase or Neon) is our default recommendation:

• Mature, battle-tested technology
• Excellent performance at scale
• Rich feature set (JSON, full-text search, etc.)
• Strong consistency guarantees
• Great tooling ecosystem

When to Add Other Databases

Add Redis for caching and sessions. Consider MongoDB for document-heavy use cases. But start with PostgreSQL and add others only when you have a specific need.

Authentication & Authorization

Don't build auth yourself in 2025. Use proven solutions:

• Supabase Auth: Best for early-stage products
• Clerk: Premium option with excellent UX
• NextAuth.js: Open-source and flexible

We typically use Supabase Auth because it integrates seamlessly with the database and provides row-level security out of the box.

Payment Processing

Stripe is the only real choice for SaaS products in 2025:

• Comprehensive features for subscriptions
• Excellent documentation
• Built-in fraud prevention
• Global payment support
• Handles tax compliance

Styling Approach

Tailwind CSS has won the styling debate. It's:

• Fast to write
• Consistent across projects
• Small production bundle
• Easy to maintain

Pair it with shadcn/ui for pre-built components and you'll move incredibly fast.

The Complete Modern Stack

Here's our recommended stack for most SaaS products in 2025:

• Frontend: Next.js 15 with React 19
• Styling: Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui
• Database: PostgreSQL (Supabase/Neon)
• Auth: Supabase Auth
• Payments: Stripe
• Email: Resend
• Analytics: Vercel Analytics
• Hosting: Vercel

Key Principles

When choosing your stack, follow these principles:

1. Boring technology wins: Use proven tools
2. Optimize for developer experience: Happy developers ship faster
3. Choose integrated solutions: Reduce integration complexity
4. Plan for scale: But don't over-engineer early

This stack has powered everything from simple MVPs to multi-million dollar SaaS businesses. It's proven, scalable, and will serve you well in 2025 and beyond.