head to head · open source
Lago vs ExpenseOwl
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars, 782 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ExpenseOwl has 1,527 stars, 155 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped 1.0 years ago. Lago leads on adoption by 604% (10,748 vs 1,527 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; ExpenseOwl is written in HTML under MIT. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ExpenseOwl 10%. Lago was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (go), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Lago | ExpenseOwl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-10-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 782 | ⑂ 155 |
| 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 ExpenseOwl if
- You want the ExpenseOwl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and ExpenseOwl 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 ExpenseOwl
ExpenseOwl Why Create This? • Features • Screenshots Installation • Usage • Contributing ExpenseOwl is an extremely simple self hosted expense tracking system with a modern monthly pie chart visualization and cashflow showcase. Why Create This? There are a ton of amazing projects for expense tracking across GitHub (Actual, Firefly III, etc.). They're all incredible! I just don't find them fast and simple . They offer too many features I never use (like accounts or complex budgeting). Don't get me wrong! They're amazing when complexity is needed, but I wanted something dead simple that gives…
read the full ExpenseOwl overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Finance & Accounting projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Finance & Accounting field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or ExpenseOwl more popular?
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars and ExpenseOwl has 1,527. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and ExpenseOwl free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ExpenseOwl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and ExpenseOwl?
Lago is written in Go and ExpenseOwl in HTML. 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 ExpenseOwl?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,748 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ExpenseOwl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.