Building a SaaS with Next.js 16: What's New

Next.js 16 is a game-changer for SaaS development. After years of incremental improvements, this release delivers three features that fundamentally change how we build and ship products. If you are building a SaaS in 2026, this is the stack you should be on.

Turbopack is Now Stable#

The bundler that promises 10x faster HMR is no longer experimental. In our testing with LaunchKit, cold starts dropped from 12 seconds to under 2 seconds. Hot module replacement is nearly instant, even on a codebase with 400+ components.

The real win is consistency. With Webpack, large codebases would occasionally stall during rebuilds. Turbopack eliminates that entirely. Your feedback loop stays tight whether you have 10 files or 10,000.

// next.config.ts - Turbopack is now the default
import type { NextConfig } from "next";

const config: NextConfig = {
  // No more --turbopack flag needed
  // It's the default bundler in Next.js 16
  output: "standalone",
};

export default config;

Cache Components Replace Implicit Caching#

The old caching model in the App Router was confusing. fetch calls were cached by default, unstable_cache had rough edges, and nobody could predict what was cached and what was not.

Next.js 16 introduces Cache Components with explicit, composable caching boundaries. You wrap a component in <Cache> and declare its revalidation strategy. No more guessing.

import { Cache } from "next/cache";

export default function Dashboard() {
  return (
    <Cache lifetime={60}>
      <MetricsPanel />
    </Cache>
  );
}

This is a massive improvement for SaaS dashboards where some data should be fresh and other data can be stale for minutes.

proxy.ts: The New Network Boundary#

Say goodbye to complex middleware.ts configurations. The new proxy.ts file gives you a clean API for intercepting and transforming requests at the edge. Authentication checks, A/B testing, and geo-routing become straightforward.

For SaaS applications, this means you can handle tenant routing, API rate limiting, and feature flags without reaching for third-party middleware solutions.

What This Means for LaunchKit#

We built LaunchKit on Next.js 16 from day one. Every template, every component, and every pattern takes advantage of these new primitives. When you start with LaunchKit, you are not just getting a boilerplate. You are getting an architecture designed for the latest runtime.

The days of fighting your framework are over. Next.js 16 finally gives SaaS developers the tools we have been asking for.