head to head · open source
Lago vs Frappe Books
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Frappe Books has 4,967 stars, 1,148 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Lago leads on adoption by 113% (10,568 vs 4,967 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Frappe Books is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Frappe Books 23%. Lago was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (open-source), 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 | Frappe Books | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 Frappe Books if
- You want the Frappe Books 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 Frappe Books 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 Frappe Books
Frappe Books is a free, open source desktop accounting application for small and medium sized businesses that runs offline on macOS, Windows and Linux, storing all financial data in a local SQLite file rather than on a remote server.
read the full Frappe Books overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Frappe Books more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and Frappe Books has 4,967. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and Frappe Books free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Frappe Books under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and Frappe Books?
Lago is written in Go and Frappe Books 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 Frappe Books?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,568 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Frappe Books if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.