SaaS on Next.js 16 (App Router), MySQL 8 and Better Auth
Type-checked against the real SDKs, migration applied to a live MySQL 8, connection clients load-tested, then tracked for upstream drift and re-verified when it moves. How we verify
session validation runs in server components and route handlers, not at the edge
What you're getting
Next.js 16 App Router — file-based routing, server components, and the Edge proxy (Next 16's renamed middleware).
MySQL 8 via Drizzle ORM and the mysql2 driver.
Better Auth — self-hosted auth running inside your app against your Postgres (Drizzle adapter).
Multi-tenant SaaS — organizations, role-based memberships, plans/subscriptions, and credit metering.
Setup
bun add next react react-dom drizzle-orm mysql2 better-authDATABASE_URLMySQL connection string (mysql://…)BETTER_AUTH_SECRETgenerate with `openssl rand -base64 32`BETTER_AUTH_URLyour app's base URLApply the schema with bunx drizzle-kit push
Initialization
Database client
Multi-tenant SaaS schema: organizations, billing & usage metering
Organizations & multi-tenancythe tenant boundary every billable and metered row hangs off
Memberships & role-based accessorg↔user join carrying owner/admin/member roles, unique per pair
Plans & subscription billing tablesthe billable plan catalog and each org's current subscription state
API usage & credit/token meteringappend-only usage rows that drive quota checks and usage billing
Verified billing (Polar)
Verified tenant scoping
Deploy targets
Decisions and compatibility
Auth runs in proxy.ts (Next 16's renamed middleware) on the Edge runtime: it gates on the session cookie's presence only — full session validation happens in Server Components and route handlers, not in the proxy.
mysql2's pool multiplexes connections; drizzle-orm/mysql2 wraps it. One module-level pool is right for a serverless/edge app — the runtime and the pool handle concurrency.
MySQL has no row-level security: multi-tenant isolation is enforced in application code via the forOrg helper (src/lib/tenant.ts), not by the database. See the tenant-scoping section on SaaS pages.
Self-hosted: Better Auth owns the user/session/account/verification tables. This stack emits them (db/auth-schema.ts) and hands them to the Drizzle adapter, so app-type schemas can foreign-key `user` directly.
One active subscription per organization (unique on organization_id) — the metering layer reads exactly one.
Usage is an append-only meter (api_usage): roll up by organization + time window for quota and billing rather than mutating a running total.
MySQL provides no row-level security. On MySQL, multi-tenant isolation is APP-ENFORCED via the forOrg helper (src/lib/tenant.ts), not database-enforced like Postgres RLS. Every org-scoped query MUST go through forOrg — a missed query leaks across tenants. Postgres cells enforce this in the database itself (RLS), so it holds even for a query that forgets to scope.