head to head · open source
Lago vs hledger
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars, 782 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hledger has 4,806 stars, 426 forks, 328 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lago leads on adoption by 124% (10,748 vs 4,806 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; hledger is written in Haskell under GPL-3.0. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, hledger 9%. hledger 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 | hledger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 782 | ⑂ 426 |
| 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 hledger if
- You want the hledger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and hledger 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 hledger
hledger Robust, intuitive plain text accounting Welcome! This is a brief intro to hledger. For a more detailed version, see the home page: hledger is lightweight, cross platform, multi currency, double entry accounting software. It lets you track money, investments, cryptocurrencies, invoices, time, inventory and more, in a safe, future proof plain text data format with full version control and privacy. hledger aims to help both computer experts and regular folks gain clarity in their finances and time management. Though the UIs are basic, hledger can model any accounting situation and provide precise, clear…
read the full hledger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or hledger more popular?
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars and hledger has 4,806. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and hledger free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and hledger under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and hledger?
Lago is written in Go and hledger in Haskell. 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 hledger?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,748 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose hledger if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.