head to head · open source
Lago vs TaxHacker
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. TaxHacker has 6,706 stars, 1,092 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Lago leads on adoption by 58% (10,568 vs 6,706 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; TaxHacker is written in TypeScript under MIT. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, TaxHacker 16%. Lago was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (invoices), 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 | TaxHacker | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 6.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| 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 TaxHacker if
- You want the TaxHacker feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and TaxHacker 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 TaxHacker
TaxHacker is a self hosted, MIT licensed AI accounting application written in TypeScript that reads receipts, invoices and PDFs and turns them into structured expense and income records for freelancers, indie hackers and small businesses.
read the full TaxHacker overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or TaxHacker more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and TaxHacker has 6,706. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and TaxHacker free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and TaxHacker under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and TaxHacker?
Lago is written in Go and TaxHacker 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 TaxHacker?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,568 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose TaxHacker if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.