head to head · open source
Lago vs UniBee
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars, 750 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. UniBee has 229 stars, 39 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Lago leads on adoption by 4,515% (10,568 vs 229 stars). Lago is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; UniBee is written in various languages under AGPL-3.0. Lago has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, UniBee 17%. 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 | UniBee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 229 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | — |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-02-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 750 | ⑂ 39 |
| 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 UniBee if
- You want the UniBee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- You evaluated both and UniBee 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 UniBee
UniBee is an open source billing platform built for SaaS businesses. It lives in the Business Software category, under Finance and Accounting, and is distributed under the AGPL 3.0 license. The project describes itself as a universal billing software that is open source, with both a community version and an enterprise version. It is designed specifically for subscription based software companies, and it presents itself as an alternative to closed source commercial platforms such as Recurly, Chargebee, and Paddle.
read the full UniBee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lago or UniBee more popular?
Lago has 10,568 GitHub stars and UniBee has 229. Lago has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lago and UniBee free?
Both are open source. Lago is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and UniBee under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Lago and UniBee?
Lago is written in Go and UniBee in various languages. 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 UniBee?
Choose Lago if you want the larger community (10,568 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose UniBee if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.