18 Best Next.js 16 Admin Dashboards With shadcn/ui 2026

The best Next.js 16 admin dashboards built with shadcn/ui span free, open-source starters and polished premium templates. For a free foundation, the official shadcn/ui dashboard blocks, Kiranism’s next-shadcn-dashboard-starter, and arhamkhnz’s next-shadcn-admin-dashboard are the most widely used. For a finished, support-backed product, premium options like Apex and Haze — plus the vertical-specific Signal (DevOps), Ember (healthcare), Vault and Fortress (finance) — cover most use cases. This guide compares 18 dashboards: 7 free and open-source, 11 premium — all built on Next.js with App Router, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and shadcn/ui on Radix UI primitives.

shadcn/ui is an open-source React component collection built on Radix UI primitives and styled with Tailwind CSS. Unlike traditional component libraries (Material UI, Ant Design), shadcn/ui components are copied directly into your project source code, giving you full ownership with zero package dependency lock-in — a significant advantage for admin dashboards that require heavy customization of tables, forms, and navigation.

For broader options beyond Next.js, see our roundups of shadcn admin dashboard templates (25 free + premium picks), shadcn/ui templates & starter kits, and Next.js admin dashboard templates.

Comparison Table

All 18 are React-based and use shadcn/ui components on Radix UI, styled with Tailwind CSS. The open-source picks are free under permissive (mostly MIT) licenses; the premium picks add finished pages, industry-specific modules, and vendor support. One note on scope: the single most-starred shadcn admin, satnaing/shadcn-admin (12k+ stars), is built with Vite and TanStack Router rather than Next.js, so it sits outside this list — but it’s well worth a look if you aren’t committed to Next.js.

Best Free & Open-Source Next.js + shadcn/ui Dashboards

Start here if you have engineering time and want to own every line of your admin panel. These are free, MIT-licensed, and actively maintained.

1. shadcn/ui Dashboard Blocks (Official)

The official shadcn/ui blocks are the reference implementation everything else is measured against. dashboard-01 ships a collapsible sidebar, interactive Recharts charts, and a TanStack-powered data table; the sidebar-* and login blocks cover the rest of an admin shell. Because you copy the code in rather than install a package, there’s no dependency to fight when you customize. Free forever, maintained by the shadcn/ui team, and with a 100k+ star repo behind it, every pattern is battle-tested and well documented.

2. next-shadcn-dashboard-starter (Kiranism)

Where the official blocks give you parts, Kiranism’s starter gives you an assembled app. Authentication and multi-tenant organizations run through Clerk, forms use React Hook Form + Zod, charts use Recharts, and the overview and product pages come pre-built with parallel routes and URL-driven state. It tracks the latest Next.js closely (recently moved to Next.js 16), so it doubles as a good way to learn current App Router patterns. MIT-licensed and free.

3. next-shadcn-admin-dashboard (arhamkhnz)

A colocation-first architecture keeps each feature’s pages, components, and logic inside its own route folder, which scales cleanly as the app grows. Beyond the dashboards it includes auth screens, role-based access control scaffolding, chat and email, kanban, calendar, and invoice pages. The project is updated frequently, so pin a commit if you need stability. MIT-licensed and free.

4. Shadboard

Built by Qualiora, Shadboard ships as both a lightweight starter kit and a fuller “full-kit” with more pages. RTL support, multi-language i18n, light/dark modes with configurable border radius and color presets, and clean back-office layouts make it a fast way to stand up a client admin. Open-source under MIT and open to community contributions.

5. Horizon UI Shadcn Boilerplate

Horizon ships 30+ dark/light UI elements, ready-made SaaS sections, and Figma design files. The free MIT boilerplate covers the ChatGPT template and core dashboard; a Pro tier adds more pages and components. It’s the natural pick when your admin panel is really the back office of an AI product that needs a database and billing from day one.

6. next-forge

Strictly, next-forge is a SaaS boilerplate rather than an admin template, but its authenticated app is built from shadcn-style components and it’s the fastest way to get a production-grade Next.js foundation with observability, feature flags, and security baked in. Reach for it when the dashboard is one surface of a larger product you intend to ship and operate.

7. Relivator

Relivator leans ecommerce first (storefront, cart, checkout), but it ships authenticated dashboard and billing pages built on shadcn/ui, making it a strong pick when your admin panel sits behind a store. It’s actively developed, MIT-licensed, and tuned for AI-assisted editors like Cursor, which makes it approachable for smaller teams.

Best Premium Next.js + shadcn/ui Dashboards

Premium templates cost money but save weeks: dozens of finished pages, industry-specific modules, and vendor support. The DashboardPack templates below share a common stack — Next.js 16 App Router with static export, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4 with OKLCh tokens, vendored shadcn/ui on Radix UI, Recharts 3, TanStack Table v8, and Framer Motion — so migrating between them mid-project is straightforward.

8. Apex

Built by the team behind AdminLTE (45,000+ GitHub stars, 28,000+ forks), Apex represents the premium evolution of the most-downloaded open-source admin template. The static export architecture means zero server runtime in production — deploy to Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, or S3.

9. Shadcn UI Kit

Shadcn UI Kit is essentially a marketplace of shadcn/ui dashboards, blocks, and real-world examples kept current with Next.js 16, React 19, and Tailwind CSS v4. Templates are React-first and drop into Next.js, Vite, Remix, or TanStack Start. If you want breadth — many dashboards and pages that share one visual system — this is the widest premium catalog on this list, and you can validate it with the free components first.

10. Admindek Dashboard Next.js

Admindek Next.js is a full-stack-ready admin dashboard built on Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript 6 strict mode, and Tailwind CSS v4 with OKLCh tokens. It ships 35+ vendored shadcn/ui primitives — you own the source, no black-box dependency — plus TanStack Table v8 with server-side pagination, React Hook Form + Zod v4 validation, and Recharts 3 for data viz. 30+ pages span analytics, e-commerce CRUD, CRM, finance, chat, calendar, kanban, and a full auth flow with 2FA, OAuth, and password reset.

11. Signal

Terminal-inspired design with JetBrains Mono typography and 57+ pages. The 13 domain-specific views cover Server Fleet, Containers, Deployments, Incidents, Log Explorer, Uptime Monitor, CI/CD Pipelines, Databases, Security Audit, API Monitoring, Kubernetes, Cloud Costs, and a public Status Page. Six color presets and three density modes. Also available as a Laravel variant.

12. Flux

Gradient-forward design with Framer Motion animations across 64+ pages and 5 dashboard variants (Overview, Analytics, eCommerce, CRM, SaaS). The 35 shadcn/ui primitives, dark/light/system themes, RTL, Command Palette, and i18n for 3 languages round out a template built specifically for developer tools and SaaS products.

13. Shadcn Admin Kit (Shadcnblocks)

Sold through Shadcnblocks’ all-access plan, the Admin Kit is a polished, Vercel-ready dashboard with interactive lists wired to dummy JSON, ESLint and Prettier preconfigured, and monthly updates. It’s most valuable if you already buy Shadcnblocks for its marketing and application blocks and want a consistent admin to match the rest of your product.

14. Haze Dashboard — Next.js Edition

Where most Next.js + shadcn templates ship a layout and a few demo pages, Haze ships a finished application. Five dashboard variants (Overview, Analytics, eCommerce, CRM, SaaS) sit alongside eight interactive modules — chat, mail, kanban with @dnd-kit, calendar, file manager, Recharts dashboards, Tiptap 3 editor, and react-leaflet maps. Every CRUD view hits a mock API that supports search, pagination, and column-level filtering, so you can demo realistic data interactions on day one.

Under the hood it’s strictly modern: Next.js 16 App Router with Turbopack, React 19, TypeScript 5 in strict mode, Tailwind v4 OKLCh tokens, Zustand for state, react-hook-form + Zod for validation, and a live theme customizer that toggles color mode, accent, density, and RTL at runtime. next-intl ships English, German, and French.

15. Ember

Purpose-built for healthcare with 50+ pages covering Patient Management, Appointments, Vitals Monitor, Prescriptions, Lab Results, Vaccinations, Health Records, Bed Management, Staff Management, Telemedicine, and Billing. Uses TanStack Table v8 for patient data grids, Leaflet for facility maps, TipTap for medical notes, and Recharts 3 for vitals visualization. Includes Vitest + Playwright testing — essential for healthcare compliance.

16. Zenith

Ultra-minimal design with 50+ routes and 6 dashboard variants (Overview, Analytics, eCommerce, CRM, SaaS, Finance). Ships with 34 vendored shadcn/ui components, AI Chat, Kanban Board, Calendar, multi-step Wizard, Rich Text Editor (TipTap 3), Leaflet maps, and full CRUD. Live theme customizer with 3 density levels, Storybook integration, and built-in documentation site.

17. Vault

Robinhood-inspired design with Plus Jakarta Sans for readability and Geist Mono for financial data. 57+ pages spanning Portfolio, Watchlist, Market Overview, Stock Screener, Market Movers, Earnings Calendar, Dividends, Order History, Price Alerts, Analytics, Tax Center, and Stock Detail. Dark/light themes with 6 color presets and RTL support.

18. Fortress

Institutional finance dashboard with 57+ pages and 13 finance-specific modules covering multi-asset trading (Fixed Income, FX, Derivatives), risk analytics, and regulatory compliance. Information-dense multi-panel layouts mirror professional trading terminals. Framer Motion animations used sparingly to maintain speed. Vitest + Playwright testing and Storybook documentation included.

How to Choose the Right Next.js + shadcn/ui Dashboard

• Free vs premium: Start free — the official blocks or a starter like next-shadcn-dashboard-starter — when you have engineering time and want to own every line. Choose premium (Apex, Haze, the vertical packs) when you need dozens of finished pages, an industry-specific layout, or vendor support to hit a deadline.
• Official vs assembled vs finished: The shadcn/ui blocks give maximum control but you build the app; starters (Kiranism, arhamkhnz) hand you an app scaffold; premium templates hand you a finished product.
• Industry vertical: Healthcare → Ember. DevOps → Signal. Retail finance → Vault. Institutional finance → Fortress. Ecommerce → Relivator or Apex. Pre-built modules save weeks versus adapting a general-purpose dashboard.
• Authentication: Clerk-based (Kiranism, next-forge), Supabase (Horizon), Better Auth (Relivator), or bring-your-own on the premium templates (most ship auth UI without locking you to a provider).
• Design & white-label: Zenith‘s achromatic palette is easiest to rebrand; Flux‘s 300+ color combinations offer the most theming; arhamkhnz‘s theme presets are the free way to experiment.
• Testing & docs: Ember, Fortress, and Zenith bundle Storybook + Vitest + Playwright — important for larger teams and regulated industries.

Prefer to build it yourself?

If a template isn’t the right fit, the shadcn/ui + Next.js stack lets you scaffold a production admin panel in hours rather than weeks. The core steps:

1. Project setup — create-next-app with TypeScript and Tailwind, then npx shadcn init and add the sidebar, table, card, chart, and command components (or npx shadcn add dashboard-01 for the whole shell at once).
2. Layout architecture — use Next.js route groups: a (dashboard) group sharing a collapsible sidebar layout, and an (auth) group with a centered, sidebar-free layout to avoid navigation flash.
3. Data tables — shadcn’s DataTable wraps TanStack Table v8; drive server-side pagination, sorting, and filtering from URL searchParams so filtered views stay bookmarkable and shareable.
4. Auth & roles — Clerk for the fastest hosted setup (organizations, RBAC, SSO), or Auth.js / Better Auth when you need self-hosting; protect routes with Next.js middleware.
5. Charts — the shadcn Chart component (Recharts) paired with Card KPIs; reach for Tremor when you need heavier, real-time dashboards.
6. Command palette — the Command component (cmdk) wired to Cmd/Ctrl+K gives power users mouse-free navigation and search.
7. Dark mode — add next-themes; every shadcn component adapts automatically through CSS variables.

Before you ship: require auth on every dashboard route, gate navigation by role, add Suspense loading states and error.tsx boundaries, collapse the sidebar to a sheet on mobile, verify keyboard navigation, and log who changed what. Two excellent free starters that implement all of the above: next-shadcn-dashboard-starter and next-forge.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related reading: shadcn admin dashboard templates · Next.js admin dashboard templates · Next.js SaaS templates · Next.js ecommerce templates · Next.js landing page templates · Next.js starter kits · Next.js templates complete guide.