head to head · open source
Lago vs Bigcapital
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bigcapital has 3,898 stars, 524 forks, 214 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lago leads on adoption by 171% (10,568 vs 3,898 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Bigcapital is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Bigcapital 13%. Bigcapital was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (payments), 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 | Bigcapital | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 524 |
| 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 Bigcapital if
- You want the Bigcapital feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Bigcapital 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 Bigcapital
Bigcapital is an open source accounting and inventory software project for small and medium businesses. It belongs to the business software category and the finance and accounting ecosystem, is written in TypeScript, and is released under the AGPL 3.0 license. The project describes itself as independent financial accounting with intelligent reporting, and it positions itself as an alternative to Quickbooks, Xero, and Wave.
read the full Bigcapital overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Bigcapital more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and Bigcapital has 3,898. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and Bigcapital free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Bigcapital under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and Bigcapital?
Lago is written in Go and Bigcapital in TypeScript. 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 Bigcapital?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,568 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Bigcapital if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.