Lago
Open-source, AI-native billing platform for usage-based, subscription, prepaid and hybrid pricing
By Lago · 4.3/5 verified-buyer score
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- AI and API-first companies that must meter and bill LLM tokens (input, output, cached) per customer.
- SaaS teams moving to usage-based, hybrid or prepaid-credit pricing without rebuilding billing from scratch.
- Engineering-led organisations that want to self-host billing under AGPLv3 or deploy inside their own VPC.
- Finance teams that want quotes, order forms, invoicing, dunning and revenue recognition in one system.
- Global businesses invoicing the same customer in multiple currencies and from multiple billing entities.
Ideal size: 20–500 people · Scale-up or enterprise with a product or billing engineering owner
Not for
- Companies that want one vendor to move money end to end; Lago connects to Stripe, Adyen or GoCardless instead of processing payments.
- Businesses with simple flat-rate subscriptions and no metering, entitlement or credit needs.
- Teams without engineering capacity to integrate a REST API, SDKs and webhooks.
- Buyers who need published, self-serve list pricing; Lago Premium is quote-only.
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
Weeks, driven by your integration
~30 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$0/yr
Starts at $0 · Open source (AGPLv3) is free to self-host. Lago Premium on Cloud or self-hosted is quote-only, with several capabilities priced as on-demand add-ons.
Implementation Friction
3/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Buyer Score
out of 5 · verified buyers
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Not stated; no seat tier or seat minimum is published on the pricing page.
Add-on costs
- Premium ingestion sources (available on demand)
- Progressive billing (available on demand)
- Tax integrations (available on demand)
- Automatic dunning (available on demand)
- Quotes and order forms (available on request)
- CRM, CPQ and accounting software integrations (available on demand)
- Custom branding (available on demand)
- 24x7 incident management (available on demand)
- Assigned Solution Engineer (available on demand)
- Additional billing entities beyond the included cap
- Data pipeline volume beyond the included monthly cap
- Forward Deployed Services (custom professional service, pricing on demand)
Company & support
Who is behind Lago, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsPaid plans
- Community forumAll plans
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerEnterprise only
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- 24/7
- Response time
- Not stated
Documentation, knowledge base and community are open to all. Lago Premium adds a customer support portal, business-hours incident management, implementation guidance and check-in. 24x7 incident management and an Assigned Solution Engineer are on-demand add-ons; 99.9% historical uptime with SLAs…
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Lago sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Lago
- Metadata.io
- Blend
- Terret
- Plaid
- Bombora
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Lago. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
Ships an official MCP server. Connects to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT connectors and Cursor out of the box.
AI & MCP readiness
What Lago ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Vendor describes AI Billing and AI Finance Assistants that answer plain-language questions and build reports, an AI Dunning Agent (beta) for collections, and AI forecasting with revenue recognition. The Agent SDK meters LLM token usage. Model provider and per-action AI log export are not disclosed.
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Official MCP server
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Lago is an open-source, AI-native billing platform for usage-based, subscription, prepaid and hybrid pricing. It meters events and AI tokens, applies pricing and credits, and turns them into itemized invoices, then connects to Stripe, Adyen or GoCardless for collection. Deploy self-hosted under AGPLv3 or as managed Lago Premium. Customers include PayPal, CoreWeave and Mistral AI, and the Agent SDK meters LLM token usage from major providers and AI gateways.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Lago cost?
The open-source version is free to self-host under AGPLv3. Lago Premium, available on Cloud or self-hosted, is not publicly priced: deployment size and needs vary, so the team quotes directly after a demo. Several capabilities, including 24x7 incident management, quotes and order forms, tax integrations and data-pipeline volume, are priced on demand as add-ons.
How long does implementation take?
Lago is developer-first. The docs walk through building your first plans, and applications connect through a REST API, official SDKs (JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Go) and signed webhooks, with an OpenAPI spec published. Most teams are metering events and issuing a first production invoice within weeks; Premium includes implementation guidance and check-in, with Forward Deployed Services as a custom option.
Does Lago replace our payment processor or Stripe Billing?
No. Lago calculates charges, generates invoices and applies tax, then connects to payment processors such as Stripe, Adyen and GoCardless to collect the payment. It sits alongside your existing processor rather than replacing it, and is positioned as an alternative to closed billing platforms on pricing flexibility and open-source transparency.
Can Lago bill for AI and LLM usage?
Yes. Lago meters input, output and cached tokens separately and attributes each event to a customer. The Agent SDK captures usage from OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini, Mistral, Databricks AI Gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway and Ramp Router, either as token counts or as the dollar cost actually charged, with your margin applied.
Is Lago secure and compliant?
Lago is SOC 2 Type II certified and undergoes regular third-party penetration tests. It supports SSO (Google, Okta, Microsoft Entra ID), role-based access control, API key permissions, security logs and an audit trail, and can be deployed on-premises or in your own cloud with no vendor lock-in.
Does Lago support MCP?
Yes. Lago ships an MCP server, listed as a Lago Premium feature, so you can query your billing data from Claude, your own agent or any MCP client. The AI Finance Assistant, available in beta, can also be reached through the same MCP server.