QuotaStack vs Lago

Lago is an open-source metering and usage-based billing platform licensed under AGPLv3 with over 10,000 GitHub stars. It supports subscription-based, usage-based, and hybrid billing models with six aggregation methods (count, count-unique, sum, max, latest, weighted sum), real-time event ingestion, prepaid credit wallets, entitlements via a partner integration (Oso), coupons, dunning automation, and integrations with Stripe, Adyen, NetSuite, Salesforce, and cloud marketplaces. Customers include Mistral AI, PayPal, 1NCE, and Laravel. The open-source model is Lago’s genuine differentiator: teams that want full data ownership, self-hostable infrastructure, and code they can audit or modify will find no equivalent among proprietary competitors.

Lago’s cloud pricing is sales-led for its Business and Enterprise tiers, both requiring a “Contact us” or “Book a demo” interaction with no public rate card listed on the pricing page as of June 2026. The cloud is not self-serve. Self-hosting is free (AGPLv3), covering the full core feature set without usage caps — but you bear the infrastructure and operational overhead. Lago’s pricing FAQ notes that packages are “tailored to specific company stages: early, scaling, or enterprise” and charges based on a usage-based dimension such as events ingested, invoices generated, or active customers; specific rates are not publicly listed for the cloud tiers. This means the cloud path requires a sales conversation, while self-hosting is a genuine zero-cost option backed by a large open-source community.

On credit primitives, Lago supports prepaid credit wallets with up to five active wallets per customer, priority ordering (1–50), purchased and granted credit types, scoping to specific fee types or billable metrics, expiration management, and real-time ongoing balance estimation. Entitlements (feature gates, privileges, allowances, and quotas) are available as a feature but are powered by a partner integration with Oso. QuotaStack treats credits, entitlements, reservations, and wallets as first-class built-in primitives accessible directly via API without additional partner configuration.

The honest choice turns on your deployment preferences and go-to-market stage. If you need full data sovereignty, a self-hostable billing stack you can modify and audit, and are comfortable managing infrastructure — Lago’s open-source model is unique in this space. If you are an indie developer or early-stage startup that wants credit-native billing primitives, transparent self-serve pricing, a free managed cloud tier, and a zero-ops start — without a sales call and without running a server — QuotaStack is built for that.