head to head · open source
Lago vs Invoice Ninja
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Invoice Ninja has 10,086 stars, 2,707 forks, 945 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lago leads on adoption by 5% (10,568 vs 10,086 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 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 Invoice Ninja
Invoice Ninja is a source available invoice, quote, project, and time tracking application built with Laravel and PHP. It lives in the Laravel ecosystem and is positioned as an open alternative to QuickBooks, Xero, and FreshBooks. The project provides a web application, API, desktop clients, and mobile clients for businesses that need to bill clients and manage payment related work.
read the full Invoice Ninja overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or Invoice Ninja more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and Invoice Ninja has 10,086. 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 (10,568 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.