head to head · open source
Lago vs OpenBudgeteer
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenBudgeteer has 973 stars, 62 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Lago leads on adoption by 986% (10,568 vs 973 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; OpenBudgeteer is written in C# under AGPL-3.0. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, OpenBudgeteer 6%. Lago 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 | OpenBudgeteer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 973 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-01-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 62 |
| 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 OpenBudgeteer if
- You want the OpenBudgeteer feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and OpenBudgeteer 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 OpenBudgeteer
OpenBudgeteer is a self hosted budgeting web application built on the Bucket Budgeting Principle, aimed at people who want to run their own budget planning software in Docker rather than pay for a hosted service.
read the full OpenBudgeteer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or OpenBudgeteer more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and OpenBudgeteer has 973. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and OpenBudgeteer free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and OpenBudgeteer under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and OpenBudgeteer?
Lago is written in Go and OpenBudgeteer in C#. 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 OpenBudgeteer?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,568 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenBudgeteer if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.