head to head · open source
Lago vs Expensify
Lago has 10,753 GitHub stars, 782 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Expensify has 5,087 stars, 4,094 forks, 2,252 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lago leads on adoption by 111% (10,753 vs 5,087 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Expensify is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Expensify 80%. Expensify 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 | Expensify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 782 | ⑂ 4.1K |
| 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 Expensify if
- You want the Expensify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Expensify 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 Expensify
New Expensify Table of Contents Local Development Platform Specific Setup Testing on browsers in simulators and emulators Running The Tests Additional Reading Application Philosophy API Details Contributing to Expensify Expensify Code of Conduct Contributor License Agreement React StrictMode Left Hand Navigation(LHN) HybridApp additional info & troubleshooting Local development These instructions should get you set up ready to work on New Expensify 🙌 Getting Started 1. Install nvm then node & npm : brew install nvm && nvm install 2. Install watchman : brew install watchman 3. Install dependencies: npm install…
read the full Expensify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Expensify more popular?
Lago has 10,753 GitHub stars and Expensify has 5,087. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and Expensify free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Expensify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and Expensify?
Lago is written in Go and Expensify 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 Expensify?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,753 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Expensify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.