Lago | Open-Source Billing Infrastructure | WarmIndex

Lago is an open-source metering and usage-based billing platform designed for developers and SaaS companies to flexibly manage complex pricing models with full transparency and control.

🚀 Overview

Lago is a powerful open-source billing infrastructure that enables teams to handle metering, subscriptions, invoicing, and analytics without relying on proprietary black-box services like Stripe Billing or Chargebee. It combines the flexibility of custom-built systems with the reliability of managed platforms, supporting hybrid pricing (subscriptions + usage), prepaid credits, entitlements, and more.

What problem does this project solve? Traditional billing tools often lock teams into rigid models, charge high fees on revenue, and lack transparency, making it hard to iterate on pricing or scale with business growth. Lago provides an API-first, event-based solution for accurate usage tracking and fair billing at any scale.

Who is it built for? Engineering teams building custom billing logic, product managers shipping new pricing fast, finance/ops needing a single source of truth—especially in AI, enterprise SaaS, IoT, and infrastructure.

Why did you build it? To give developers full ownership and extensibility over billing, avoiding vendor lock-in while scaling to enterprise needs, as seen with users like Mistral AI and PayPal.

✨ Key Features

Usage Metering: Real-time event ingestion and aggregation for precise consumption tracking, handling millions of events per second.
Flexible Pricing: Supports hybrid plans, progressive billing, prepaid credits, coupons, add-ons, entitlements—what matters for complex models.
Invoicing & Payments: Automated invoice generation, dunning, credit notes, and agnostic integrations with Stripe, GoCardless, etc.
Analytics & Alerts: Revenue dashboards, real-time usage alerts, data exports.
Upcoming: Enhanced AI capabilities for dynamic pricing (on-demand in Enterprise).

🛠 Tech Stack

Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS
Backend: Go (primary API), Ruby
Database: PostgreSQL (with pg_partman), Redis, ClickHouse
Auth: Custom (RBAC, enterprise-grade security)
Hosting: Self-hosted (Docker Compose, Traefik), Lago Cloud

👥 Who Is This For?

This project is useful for:

Developers who want to ___implement scalable usage-based billing without vendor dependencies
Teams looking for ___transparent metering and pricing experimentation
Indie makers building ___SaaS products with flexible monetization

📸 Screenshots / Demo

Live demo: Run locally in minutes: git clone https://github.com/getlago/lago.git && docker compose up (API at localhost:3000)
GitHub: https://github.com/getlago/lago

🔥 Project Status

🟢 Actively building

Last updated: 2026-03-24

❓ FAQ

Is this project free?

Open Source self-hosted: Yes, completely free (AGPLv3). Cloud: Paid (Business/Enterprise custom pricing—contact for demo). (Explain briefly.)

Is the source code available?

Yes — https://github.com/getlago/lago

Can I contribute?

Yes—set up dev environment per docs/dev_environment.md, follow CONTRIBUTING.md, open issues/PRs on GitHub. 40+ contributors welcome!

📬 Contact & Links

Built with ❤️ and kept warm on WarmIndex.

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