Lago
Open-source billing platform for usage-based, subscription and hybrid pricing.
By Lago · 4.2/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- AI, API and infrastructure companies metering tokens, events or API calls at high volume
- SaaS businesses combining subscriptions, usage charges, prepaid credits and plan overrides
- Engineering-led teams that want to self-host billing and keep control of their data
- Finance teams needing invoicing, dunning, revenue recognition and MRR reporting on one engine
- Global companies billing in multiple currencies and from multiple billing entities
Ideal size: 20–500 people · Engineering-led, usage-based or hybrid-priced business
Not for
- Businesses with a single flat-rate subscription and no metered usage
- Teams without engineering capacity to integrate a billing API or self-host
- Buyers who need public list pricing before an internal approval
- Companies looking for a payment processor or merchant of record instead of a billing layer
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
2–4 weeks
~21 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
On request
Open-source self-hosted free under AGPLv3; Lago Premium on Cloud or self-hosted is quote-based, not publicly listed
Implementation Friction
3/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Not published — Premium is priced per deployment on quote, not per seat
Add-on costs
- Premium ingestion sources
- Progressive billing
- Tax integrations
- Automatic dunning
- Data pipeline volume above the included monthly cap
- 24x7 incident management
- Assigned Solution Engineer
- Forward Deployed Services / custom professional services
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-siteEnterprise only
- Hours
- 24/7
- Response time
- 99.9% uptime SLA for enterprise customers
Lago Premium includes business-hours incident management and a support portal; 24x7 incident management, an assigned solution engineer and forward-deployed services are on-demand add-ons. Docs, API reference and community are openly available.
“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.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Lago
- Metadata.io
- Terret
- Juro
- Blend
- WorkOS
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 documents AI Billing and AI Finance Assistants (read-only reporting, beta), an AI Dunning Agent, AI usage forecasting and revenue recognition, and its own MCP server. Lago states the dunning agent's model drafts while deterministic code decides sends and retries.
Your data & models
- Trains on your data
- Not recorded — ask the vendor
- Runs on
- Not recorded
- AI pricing
- Included in the plan
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 billing platform for usage-based, subscription, prepaid and hybrid pricing, with AI assistants for reporting, forecasting and collections. Engineering teams meter tokens, events and API calls and set rates; finance teams get wallets, dunning, revenue recognition and MRR reporting. Customers include CoreWeave, Mistral AI and PayPal. Self-host free under AGPLv3, or run Lago Premium on cloud or your own infrastructure; Premium pricing is quote-based. SOC 2 Type II certified.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Lago cost?
The open-source version is free to self-host under an AGPLv3 license. Lago Premium, available on Cloud or self-hosted, is not publicly priced because deployment size and needs vary; the team shares pricing when you book a demo. Some capabilities, such as premium ingestion sources, progressively billed add-ons and 24x7 incident management, are priced separately.
Can we run Lago on our own infrastructure?
Yes. Lago is AGPLv3-licensed and open source, so you can self-host it on your own infrastructure, deploy it on-prem or in your own VPC, or run it as a managed cloud service instead. Self-hosting keeps full control of usage, customer and billing data.
How do our applications integrate with Lago?
Applications connect through a REST API, official SDKs (JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Go), and signed webhooks. The public OpenAPI spec and developer docs cover each integration path, and there is an Agent SDK for capturing LLM and AI gateway usage, plus a CLI generated from the OpenAPI spec.
Does Lago replace our payment processor?
No. Lago calculates charges, generates invoices and applies tax, then connects to payment processors such as Stripe, Adyen and GoCardless to collect payment. It sits alongside your existing processor rather than replacing it.
What AI features does Lago include?
Lago Premium lists AI Billing and AI Finance Assistants that answer plain-language questions and return reports, an AI Dunning Agent that drafts collection actions, and AI forecasting with revenue recognition. The Finance Assistant is read-only and in beta, and the Dunning Agent is available on request. An MCP server lets Claude or your own agent query billing data.
What security and compliance posture does Lago offer?
Lago is SOC 2 Type II certified and undergoes regular third-party penetration tests. It offers flexible deployment (on-prem or in your VPC), SSO, role-based access control, API key permissions, security logs and audit trails, with a dedicated security contact for vulnerability reports.