head to head · open source
Lago vs Invoice Ninja
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars, 782 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Invoice Ninja has 10,464 stars, 2,793 forks, 945 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lago leads on adoption by 3% (10,748 vs 10,464 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Invoice Ninja is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Invoice Ninja 27%. Lago was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (invoices, payments), 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 | Invoice Ninja | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 10K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 782 | ⑂ 2.8K |
| 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 Invoice Ninja if
- You want the Invoice Ninja feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Invoice Ninja 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 Invoice Ninja
Invoice Ninja 5 Invoice Ninja Version 5 is here! We've taken the best parts of version 4 and added the most requested features to create an invoicing application like no other. Check the Invoice Ninja YouTube Channel to get up to speed, or try the Demo now. Choose your setup Hosted: Our hosted version is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. You're up and running in under 5 minutes, with no need to worry about hosting or server infrastructure. Self Hosted: For those who prefer to manage their own hosting and server infrastructure. This version gives you full control and flexibility. All Pro and Enterprise…
read the full Invoice Ninja overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Invoice Ninja more popular?
Lago has 10,748 GitHub stars and Invoice Ninja has 10,464. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and Invoice Ninja free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Invoice Ninja has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Lago and Invoice Ninja?
Lago is written in Go and Invoice Ninja in PHP. 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 Invoice Ninja?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,748 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Invoice Ninja if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.