Lago vs Credyt
Lago is an open-source billing platform (AGPLv3 core, managed cloud tiers) for usage-based and subscription pricing, with a self-hostable architecture, a broad PSP integration ecosystem, AI billing agents, and a white-label Lago Embedded product for platforms. Credyt is purpose-built real-time billing infrastructure for AI products: usage is authorized before it occurs and debited atomically from a customer wallet at the moment each event happens. The structural difference is deployment philosophy and billing model: Lago can be self-hosted with code transparency and invoices at cycle end; Credyt is cloud-hosted and debits wallets in real time. At the canonical scenario (100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats), Lago's cloud pricing is not publicly available; Credyt costs $90/month plus pass-through PSP fees.
Choose if...
- →Engineering-led teams that need billing code transparency, auditability, and the option to self-host without vendor lock-in
- →Companies with compliance or data residency requirements that rule out SaaS-only billing platforms
- →Teams adopting open-source billing infrastructure who want a managed upgrade path to a commercial cloud tier when they scale
- →Platforms that want to offer white-label billing to their own customers via Lago Embedded
- →AI products with per-request inference costs where pre-authorization prevents runaway spend before costs are incurred
- →Solo builders and early-stage teams who need credits, auto top-up, and a billing portal without frontend engineering
- →Prepaid credit and token-economy products where customers buy balance upfront and deplete it per usage event
- →Teams implementing hybrid pricing combining subscription entitlements with usage-based overages or top-up credit pools
Feature comparison
| Dimension | Lago | Credyt |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Invoice | Hybrid Hybrid: real-time wallet debit for usage events combined with subscription entitlements. Authorization happens before the work starts; the wallet is debited atomically at the moment of usage. |
| Usage authorization | Post-usage Lago's documented model is observe-only. The platform can react to consumption (block or grant more credits) but there is no primitive to query wallet state and block an action before it runs, because the authoritative balance moves at invoice finalization. | Pre-usage |
| Wallet architecture | Add-on Lago supports up to 5 active wallets per customer with individual priorities and usage restrictions. Wallet balance (`balance_cents`) updates when an invoice is finalized, not on event ingestion. The `ongoing_balance_cents` estimate refreshes every 5 minutes and is a premium feature. | First-class primitive |
| Multi-asset support | USD-with-labels | Native |
| Payment processing | Integrated Lago provides native connectors for Stripe, Adyen, and GoCardless. Payment collection is handled by the connected PSP at pass-through rates; Lago orchestrates invoicing and routing. | Built-in Built-in via Stripe with no markup on Stripe's standard fees. External PSPs are supported through the Adjustments API — the platform reflects balance changes in Credyt without a direct Credyt integration to the PSP. |
| PSP agnostic | Partial | Partial Stripe is the built-in default; external PSPs are supported via the Adjustments API rather than a direct native integration. Not fully PSP-agnostic. |
| Customer portal | Hosted portal Pre-authenticated hosted portal showing invoices, usage, and wallet data. This is a premium feature unavailable in the AGPLv3 self-hosted tier. No self-service payment initiation or real-time balance top-up. | Drop-in |
| Auto top-up | Platform-configured | Customer-controlled |
| Open source | Partial The AGPLv3 core covers metering, subscriptions, usage-based billing, coupons, entitlements, and core wallet mechanics. The customer portal, credit notes and refunds, automatic dunning, tax integrations, CRM/accounting integrations, Lago AI agents, and Lago Embedded are commercial features unavailable in the free self-hosted tier. | No |
| Deployment | Both | Cloud only |
Pricing comparison
- Model
- AGPLv3 self-hosted core (free); Business and Enterprise cloud tiers require sales
- Free tier
- Yes
- Starting price
- Free (AGPLv3 self-hosted core); cloud tiers require sales
- Model
- Per Monthly Active Wallet (MAW) + per-event above 1M/month
- Free tier
- Yes
- Starting price
- $0 (first 10 active wallets/month free forever, full feature access)
Canonical scenario — 100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats
| Line item | Lago | Credyt |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | Not publicly available (cloud Business/Enterprise tiers); $0 for AGPLv3 self-hosted | $0 |
| Per customer | $0 | $90 (100 customers × $0.90 effective rate; pricing is $1/MAW with first 10 MAWs free — 90 paid wallets × $1) |
| Seat fees | Not publicly available | $0 (no seat fees) |
| Event fees | $0 | $0 (100K events within the 1M/month free allowance) |
| Revenue % | $0 | $0 (no revenue percentage) |
| Payment processing | Pass-through | Pass-through |
| Total / month | Not publicly available for cloud tiers. Self-hosted: $0 license cost plus infrastructure (a few hundred dollars/month on a major cloud at this scale) plus engineering time for deployment and maintenance. | $90 + pass-through PSP fees |
Lago: Lago's cloud Business and Enterprise tiers both require a sales conversation; prices are not published. Historical community discussions reference a starting cloud price of ~$3,000/month. The AGPLv3 self-hosted core is free to run but does not include the customer portal, credit notes and refunds, automatic dunning, tax integrations, CRM/accounting integrations, Lago AI agents, or Lago Embedded. Self-hosting at this event volume requires Postgres, Redis, and compute for 5+ services plus engineering for setup and ongoing maintenance. Payment processing fees are charged by the connected PSP at pass-through rates.
Credyt: Credyt charges $1 per Monthly Active Wallet with the first 10 active wallets free each month. At 100 customers the effective cost is $90 (90 paid wallets × $1). Payment processing fees from Stripe (or external PSP) are passed through without markup and are not included in Credyt's charge. Event total of 100K is well within the 1M free monthly allowance. Do not express as $0.90 per wallet — the pricing is $1/MAW with 10 free.
Lago: strengths and limitations
- +AGPLv3 core is fully auditable, forkable, and self-hostable at no license cost — code transparency matters for compliance-oriented buyers
- +Flexible deployment: self-hosted Docker Compose, managed cloud, on-premise, VPC, or custom infrastructure — suits data residency requirements
- +Extensive native integration ecosystem — Stripe, Adyen, GoCardless, Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite, Xero, and cloud marketplaces
- +Lago AI agents perform operational billing actions (discounts, invoice voids, payment retries) with an MCP server for machine-driven operations
- +Lago Embedded enables platforms to offer white-label billing features to their own customers without building billing from scratch
- +Active open-source community — 9,500+ GitHub stars, 183 total releases, latest v1.45.1 released April 7, 2026; SOC 2 Type II certified
- −Invoice-based architecture — wallet balance updates when an invoice is finalized, not on event ingestion; no real-time per-event debit
- −Material feature set gated behind paid tiers — the free AGPLv3 core excludes the customer portal, credit notes and refunds, automatic dunning, tax integrations, and CRM/accounting connectors
- −Cloud pricing is not publicly listed — Business and Enterprise tiers both require sales; historical community references cite a ~$3,000/month starting point
- −Self-hosting a production deployment still requires engineering for infrastructure, webhook wiring, payment provider setup, and release upgrades
- −No pre-usage authorization primitive — the platform can react to consumption after the fact but cannot gate individual events before they run
- −No native independent asset types — custom units like tokens or GPU hours are labels over USD-backed credit balances, not separate monetary primitives
Credyt: strengths and limitations
- +Pre-usage wallet authorization prevents margin loss before AI inference costs are incurred
- +Multi-asset wallets hold USD, tokens, GPU hours, credits, and custom units in one customer wallet
- +Drop-in branded billing portal with live balances, usage history, and self-service top-up; no frontend engineering required
- +Event-level cost attribution tracks profitability per customer, per feature, and per workload
- +MCP server connects to Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, Codex, Lovable, Bolt, Replit, and V0 for one-prompt billing setup
- +Flat per-wallet pricing with no revenue percentage, no PSP markup, and no seat fees
- −Cloud-hosted only — no self-hosted or on-premises deployment option
- −Proprietary platform; not open source unlike Lago or Flexprice
- −No enterprise contract tooling; large volumes can negotiate custom pricing but there is no formal contract management layer
- −PSP-agnostic only in partial sense; non-Stripe PSPs require manual Adjustments API integration rather than a native connector
- −Not a drop-in replacement for invoice-based subscription billing systems such as Stripe Billing or Zuora
- −Does not process payments directly — depends on Stripe or an external PSP for payment collection
Which one should you pick?
Choose Credyt if your product needs real-time per-usage spend control. The per-usage authorization model gates each inference or compute event before work starts, ensuring customers cannot exceed their wallet balance. Credyt's event-level profitability analytics also cover vendor cost ingestion and per-customer margin tracking, which Lago's aggregate reporting does not. For AI API products where a single event can cost dollars, real-time authorization changes the risk profile.
Choose Lago if code transparency, deployment flexibility, or data residency requirements are constraints. The AGPLv3 core lets you audit every line of billing logic and self-host on your own infrastructure: a genuine differentiator for teams in regulated industries or with vendor lock-in concerns. Lago's Embedded product is also worth evaluating if you are a platform that wants to offer billing features to your own customers. For teams already running invoice-based billing who want a comprehensive open-source option with an active community (9,500+ GitHub stars), Lago is the most mature choice in the OSS tier.
For some teams these platforms cover different layers. Lago handles invoicing, subscription management, and PSP routing; Credyt handles per-usage authorization and real-time wallet control. A platform that needs both invoice-based billing and per-request spend gating might combine them, though that adds integration surface.