head to head · open source
Lago vs Akaunting
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Akaunting has 10,127 stars, 2,984 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lago leads on adoption by 4% (10,568 vs 10,127 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 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 is an open source metering and usage based billing API written in Go under AGPL 3.0. It lives in the Business Software and Finance & Accounting ecosystem and sits between product usage and revenue. It turns events such as AI tokens, compute, API calls, seats, and custom events into billable metrics, pricing, credits, entitlements, invoices, and payments.
About Akaunting
Akaunting is free online accounting software for small businesses and freelancers. It lives in the PHP web application ecosystem, and it uses Laravel as its foundation framework. The project also uses VueJS, Tailwind, and a RESTful API, and it has a modular structure with an App Store.
read the full Akaunting overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Akaunting more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and Akaunting has 10,127. 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 (10,568 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.