head to head · open source
Polar vs Meteroid
Polar has 10,270 GitHub stars, 787 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Meteroid has 1,233 stars, 71 forks, 33 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Polar leads on adoption by 733% (10,270 vs 1,233 stars). Polar is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Meteroid is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Polar has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Meteroid 6%. Polar was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| Polar | Meteroid | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 10K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 787 | ⑂ 71 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Polar if
- You weight community size — 10K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Meteroid if
- You want the Meteroid feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Meteroid fits your workflow better
About Polar
Polar is an open source billing platform and payment infrastructure project for digital products, SaaS applications, and AI workloads. It is written in Python, licensed under Apache 2.0, and built around FastAPI, Next.js, React, and Turborepo. The project positions itself as a financial layer for software that needs to charge for tokens, agents, compute, subscriptions, and usage based models.
read the full Polar overview →
About Meteroid
Meteroid is an open source, cloud native pricing and billing platform for SaaS, infrastructure, and AI companies that want usage based, hybrid, or otherwise complex pricing without building and maintaining a billing system of their own.
read the full Meteroid overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Polar or Meteroid more popular?
Polar has 10,270 GitHub stars and Meteroid has 1,233. Polar has the larger community by that measure.
Are Polar and Meteroid free?
Both are open source. Polar is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Meteroid under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Polar and Meteroid?
Polar is written in Python and Meteroid in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Polar or Meteroid?
Choose Polar if you want the larger community (10,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Meteroid if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.