head to head · open source
Lago vs django-ledger
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. django-ledger has 1,385 stars, 323 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. Lago leads on adoption by 663% (10,568 vs 1,385 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; django-ledger is written in Python under GPL-3.0. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, django-ledger 23%. Lago was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | django-ledger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 323 |
| 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 django-ledger if
- You want the django-ledger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and django-ledger 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 django-ledger
Django Ledger is an open source double entry accounting system and financial analysis engine built on the Django Web Framework. It is a Python application, distributed under the GPL 3.0 license, and it is designed to be embedded in Django projects that need financial records, ledgers, and reporting.
read the full django-ledger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or django-ledger more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and django-ledger has 1,385. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and django-ledger free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and django-ledger under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and django-ledger?
Lago is written in Go and django-ledger in Python. 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 django-ledger?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,568 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose django-ledger if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.