head to head · open source
Lago vs Akaunting
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars, 782 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Akaunting has 10,270 stars, 3,011 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Lago leads on adoption by 5% (10,748 vs 10,270 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Akaunting is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Akaunting 29%. Lago was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (billing, fintech, invoices), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Lago | Akaunting | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 10K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 782 | ⑂ 3.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lago if
- You weight community size — 11K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Akaunting if
- You want the Akaunting feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Akaunting fits your workflow better
About Lago
Lago Agentic first, open source monetization infrastructure for AI products Meter tokens, compute, API calls, or any product usage. Turn usage into pricing, credits, entitlements, invoices, payments, and revenue. Use Lago Direct for your own product, or Lago Embedded to power monetization for your customers. Run the AI billing demo · Documentation · Talk to us about Lago Cloud “Lago has been able to follow the pace of our releases and has allowed us to focus on what we do best.” Timothée Lacroix, CTO at Mistral AI · Read the customer story See Lago price an AI workload Run the maintained demo from this…
About Akaunting
Akaunting™ Online accounting software designed for small businesses and freelancers. Akaunting is built with modern technologies such as Laravel, VueJS, Tailwind, RESTful API etc. Thanks to its modular structure, Akaunting provides an awesome App Store for users and developers. Home The house of Akaunting Forum Ask for support Documentation Learn how to use Developer Portal Generate passive income App Store Extend your Akaunting Requirements PHP 8.1 or higher Database (e.g.: MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite) Web Server (eg: Apache, Nginx, IIS) Other libraries Framework Akaunting uses Laravel, the best existing…
read the full Akaunting overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Akaunting more popular?
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars and Akaunting has 10,270. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and Akaunting free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Akaunting has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Lago and Akaunting?
Lago is written in Go and Akaunting in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Lago or Akaunting?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,748 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Akaunting if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.