AI Billing
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Lago

Open-source billing platform for usage-based pricing, self-hostable under AGPLv3 with managed cloud tiers.

Invoice-basedOpen SourceWalletsEntitlementsMulti-PSPEnterprise
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Last verified: April 2026

Good fit 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
  • →Organizations that need AI billing agents performing operational tasks (discounts, retries, voids) driven by business rules

Pricing

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
Revenue %
Not publicly disclosed
Per customer
Not publicly available for cloud tiers
Per event
Not publicly available for cloud tiers
Seat fees
Not publicly available for cloud tiers
Transparency
Partial

Canonical scenario — 100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats

Line itemCost
Platform feeNot publicly available (cloud Business/Enterprise tiers); $0 for AGPLv3 self-hosted
Per customer$0
Seat feesNot publicly available
Event fees$0
Revenue %$0
Payment processingPass-through
Total / monthNot 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.

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.

Technical profile

DimensionValue
Billing model
Invoice
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.
Usage tracking
Real-time metering + periodic invoice
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.
Multi-asset support
USD-with-labels
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.
PSP agnostic
Partial
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.
Auto top-up
Platform-configured
Integration model
Replaces stack
Profitability analytics
Aggregate
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.
License
Open core
Deployment
Both
Enterprise contracts
Basic
Enterprise tier offers 24/7 support, a dedicated solutions engineer, and on-prem or VPC deployment. Lago does not publish enterprise contract management features (commitments, true-ups, amendments) equivalent to Metronome or Orb.
Pricing models
Per-unit, Tiered, Volume, Subscription, Hybrid (subscription + usage), Prepaid credits / wallet

Strengths

  • +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

Limitations

  • −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

Not ideal for

  • ×Products that need real-time pre-authorization of wallet balance before individual usage events are incurred
  • ×Teams expecting a full production billing system from the open-source tier; the free core excludes the customer portal, dunning, and tax integrations
  • ×Early-stage teams with limited engineering resources; self-hosting a production deployment requires infrastructure management and ongoing maintenance
  • ×Startups with monthly budgets under a few thousand dollars who need managed cloud billing; historical pricing references suggest high cloud starting costs

Similar providers

Orb
Enterprise usage-based billing with SQL-defined metrics, pricing simulation, and deep finance integrations.
Invoice · Cloud only
Flexprice
Open-source usage metering and wallet-credit billing with a no-code pricing dashboard for SaaS and AI teams.
Hybrid · Both
Stripe Billing
Subscription and usage-based billing tightly integrated with Stripe payments, tax, and revenue recognition.
Invoice · Cloud only

Company

Founded
2022
Headquarters
Paris, France
Funding
Series A; $15M Series A (March 2024, FirstMark lead). Total raised ~$41.3M.

Sources