lago: Meter Usage and Manage Usage-Based Billing

Overview

Lago is a billing platform for connecting product usage to revenue. Applications send usage events to its API, where teams can meter consumption, apply pricing and credits, manage subscriptions, and generate invoices and payments.

It is aimed at companies building usage-based, subscription, or hybrid billing, including AI products that charge for tokens or compute. Teams can self-host the platform or use Lago's managed options. Its billing engine can also support platforms that embed billing capabilities for their own customers.

Key Features

• Ingest usage events and meter them with filters, dimensions, and custom aggregations.
• Configure usage-based, recurring, prepaid, graduated, package, volume, and hybrid pricing.
• Manage subscriptions, credits, allowances, entitlements, and usage alerts.
• Generate invoices and credit notes, and connect payment providers for collection.
• Track billing and revenue through analytics, APIs, webhooks, and the Lago UI.
• Deploy on your own infrastructure or use Lago Cloud, with worker and service scaling options for larger deployments.
• Integrate through REST APIs and SDKs for Node.js, Python, Ruby, and Go.

Use Cases

• AI product teams can meter tokens, model usage, or compute and bill customers by consumption.
• SaaS companies can combine recurring subscriptions with allowances, overages, and prepaid credits.
• Finance and product teams can change pricing models without rebuilding billing logic in their application.
• Platforms and marketplaces can embed billing capabilities for customers who sell usage-based products.

Getting Started

For a local deployment with Docker Compose:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/getlago/lago.git
cd lago
echo "LAGO_RSA_PRIVATE_KEY=\"$(openssl genrsa 2048 | openssl base64 -A)\"" >> .env
docker compose up -d

See the README and self-hosted deployment guide for configuration and production setup.

Alternatives

• openmeter: OpenMeter focuses on real-time usage metering and access limits, while Lago provides broader billing workflows including pricing, invoices, and payments.

Considerations

• Self-hosting requires operating the application and its supporting services. Production setups may need persistent storage, database and Redis configuration, and separate workers.
• The repository is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Review the license obligations before incorporating or modifying it in a distributed product.
• The README describes a broad billing platform, so teams should assess whether its capabilities and operational footprint fit their needs rather than treating it as a lightweight payment integration.
• Self-hosted instances collect basic product analytics by default; the README links to details and opt-out instructions.