5 Best Lago Alternatives in 2026
The best Lago alternatives for usage-based billing are Kribana, Orb, Metronome, Chargebee and Stripe Billing — teams switch when they want the customer portal, dunning and support that Lago's open-source core doesn't ship with, or when they'd rather not own billing infrastructure themselves. This guide compares real pricing models, genuine pros and cons, and how much migration effort each switch actually takes.
What Lago does well (and where it starts to break)
- A genuinely open-source metering and billing core (AGPLv3) you can self-host with no vendor lock-in and no per-event fees.
- Credit and prepaid balance primitives available through the API — a real advantage over metering-only competitors like Orb or Metronome.
- Full control over deployment, data residency and infrastructure, which matters for teams with strict compliance or hosting requirements.
- A clean, developer-friendly API for teams that want to build their own billing surface on top of it rather than adopt someone else's UI.
- The free, self-hosted tier doesn't include a customer portal, invoicing UI, or automatic dunning — those live behind the paid Premium tier.
- Premium, whether cloud or self-hosted, is quote-only — Lago doesn't publish pricing, so you don't know your cost until you talk to sales.
- Self-hosting the open-source core means you own uptime, upgrades and infrastructure for the one system that can't go down.
- No autonomous recovery or expansion agent — once you're on Premium, dunning is a configured automation, not a system that reads decline reasons and decides.
Signs you’ve outgrown Lago
- ✓Running the open-source core yourself has become an infrastructure project, not a billing decision.
- ✓You need a customer portal or invoicing UI now and don't want to wait on a Premium sales quote to get one.
- ✓Failed payments pile up because dunning is a configured workflow, not a system that diagnoses the decline reason.
- ✓You want prepaid credits and wallets as a finished product, not primitives you still have to assemble yourself.
- ✓Finance wants a published price before signing off on a billing vendor, not a 'contact us' conversation.
Lago alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Best for | Credits & prepaid | Pricing | Standout |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kribana | AI/SaaS teams billing on usage or prepaid credits | Native — wallets, top-ups, low-balance alerts | Percentage of billed revenue — contact sales for your rate | An agent that acts after the invoice — recovery, top-ups, expansion |
| Orb | API-first infrastructure teams that own billing engineering | No native wallet — build it on top of the ledger | Custom, usage-based — not published | Strong metering and rating engine for high event volume |
| Metronome | High-scale infrastructure and AI platforms | No native wallet — build it on top of the ledger | Custom, usage-based — not published | Rating engine built for very high event volume |
| Chargebee | Subscription-first businesses adding usage | Usage add-ons, not a dedicated wallet object | Flow plan: $0 base + 0.80% of invoiced volume, 100M events/mo included | Deep subscription management and dunning tooling |
| Stripe Billing | Teams already fully committed to Stripe as processor | Basic prepaid balances, no dedicated wallet UX | 0.7% of billing volume, 100M events/mo via the Meters API | The tightest possible integration with Stripe payments |
How we evaluated: pricing-model flexibility, native credit/prepaid support, migration effort, and what (if anything) automates after the invoice is issued.
Kribana
Best for: AI and SaaS companies billing on usage, credits, or a hybrid of both
- Real-time, idempotent usage-event ledger with metering, pricing and invoicing finished out of the box
- Native credit wallets — top-ups, low-balance alerts and burn-down tracking as first-class objects, not a workaround
- An agent that watches every account and runs top-up, recovery and expansion playbooks automatically, in autopilot, approve-first, or alert-only mode
- Pricing configured in a dashboard — Finance or RevOps can reprice without an engineering ticket
- Processor-neutral: Stripe, Razorpay, Adyen or Braintree, with a hosted or embedded customer portal
A percentage of billed revenue that shrinks as you scale — contact sales for your rate.
- ✓The portal, invoicing UI and dunning Lago's free tier doesn't include ship finished, with no Premium quote required
- ✓No infrastructure to self-host — one event stream and pricing is live the same week
- ✓Native credit wallets match what Lago's API primitives offer, but as a finished product, not a build project
- ✕Not open-source — teams that specifically want to self-host and own the code should stay with Lago's free tier
- ✕Younger platform than incumbents like Chargebee or Stripe Billing, with a shorter production track record
Orb
Best for: API-first infrastructure companies that want billing expressed in code
- A strong metering and rating engine built for high event volume
- A well-documented event ingestion API
- Flexible, programmatic pricing logic for engineering-owned billing
Custom, usage-based pricing — not published.
- ✓Metering rigor that holds up at genuinely high scale
- ✓A published price is one conversation away, unlike Lago's quote-only Premium
- ✕No credit or prepaid wallet primitive, unlike Lago's API-level credit support
- ✕No customer portal, invoicing UI or dunning system ships with it
- ✕Every price change is a code change, not a dashboard edit
Metronome
Best for: High-scale infrastructure, database and AI platform companies
- High-throughput metering and rating engine built for very large event volumes
- Flexible pricing-as-code model for engineering-owned billing
- Enterprise-paced support built for platform teams already operating at scale
Custom, usage-based pricing — not published.
- ✓Metering rigor that holds up at genuinely high scale
- ✓Strong fit if your team already thinks about pricing in code, similar to Lago's API-first model
- ✕No native payment recovery — declines route to your own tooling
- ✕No credit or prepaid wallet primitive, and no customer portal or invoicing UI shipped
- ✕Acquired by Stripe in January 2026 — worth watching for roadmap and pricing changes as the integration settles
Chargebee
Best for: Subscription-first B2B SaaS adding usage-based components
- Mature subscription management, proration and dunning workflows
- Usage-based billing supported on the Flow plan, with 100M events/month included
- Large, established customer base and integration ecosystem
Flow plan starts at $0 base plus 0.80% of invoiced volume; Enterprise is custom.
- ✓A published starting price, unlike Lago's quote-only Premium tier
- ✓Deep subscription tooling if recurring plans are still your primary pricing model
- ✕Usage pricing feels bolted onto a subscription core rather than built from it, unlike Lago's usage-native API
- ✕Dunning is scheduled retries, not decline-reason-aware recovery
Stripe Billing
Best for: Teams already fully committed to Stripe as their only payment processor
- Billing built directly into the Stripe payments platform
- Metered billing for straightforward per-unit usage, up to 100M events/month via the Meters API
- Smart Retries and automatic dunning reminders included in the fee
0.7% of billing volume processed through Stripe; advanced usage-based billing routes to Metronome.
- ✓The simplest option if Stripe is already your processor — no separate infrastructure to run, unlike Lago's self-hosted core
- ✓One vendor for payments and billing means one integration to maintain
- ✕Requires Stripe as your processor — switching or adding a second processor later means re-platforming billing too
- ✕No prepaid credit or wallet primitive comparable to Lago's
The migration reality check
The part most alternatives guides skip: what actually happens when you switch. Every migration below runs the same way regardless of destination — stream events to both systems, mirror your current plans, validate one full billing cycle side-by-side, then cut over at the start of the next cycle.
| Tool | Import path | What carries over | Time to first invoice | Cutover risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kribana | Native importer for Lago's usage events and invoice history | Usage events, plan structure, invoice history | 1–2 weeks, run in parallel with Lago | Low — validate one full billing cycle side-by-side before cutover |
| Orb | API export and manual re-mapping | Usage events only — portal and invoicing aren't part of the migration since Orb doesn't ship them | Weeks, depending on your integration | Medium — no vendor-provided switch path from Lago |
| Metronome | API export and manual re-mapping | Usage events only — same gap as switching to Orb | Weeks, depending on your integration | Medium — no vendor-provided switch path from Lago |
| Chargebee | CSV export or API | Usage data mapped into Chargebee's subscription and invoice model | Weeks, more with complex proration rules | Medium — usage-native pricing has to be re-modeled around a subscription core |
| Stripe Billing | Manual re-mapping unless Stripe already processes your payments | Usage events; subscription objects only carry over if Stripe was already your processor | Days to weeks if already on Stripe, longer otherwise | Low if staying on Stripe as processor, higher if also switching processors |
How to choose: a 5-question framework
Do you want to own the infrastructure, or hand it off?
If you want to keep self-hosting an open-source core, Lago's free tier remains a real option. If you'd rather not run billing infrastructure yourself, Kribana, Chargebee and Stripe Billing are all fully hosted with no deployment to manage.
Do you need prepaid credits or wallets?
Kribana and Lago both have real credit primitives — Kribana ships them as a finished wallet product, Lago exposes them through its API for you to assemble. Orb, Metronome, Chargebee and Stripe Billing all require you to build that layer yourself.
Do you need a published price, or is a sales quote fine?
Chargebee, Stripe Billing and Kribana all give you a starting price or a direct sales conversation without a lengthy procurement cycle. Lago Premium and Orb are both quote-only with no public numbers.
How much engineering bandwidth do you have to dedicate to billing?
Low bandwidth points to Kribana or Chargebee, where pricing is dashboard-configured. High bandwidth and a preference for full programmatic control points to Orb, Metronome, or continuing to self-host Lago.
What should happen after the invoice — automated recovery, or is reporting enough?
If you want failed payments retried by decline reason, low balances topped up automatically and expansion signals flagged without a human watching a dashboard, Kribana's agent is the only option here built for that. Everyone else, Lago included, stops at the invoice or a configured retry schedule.
FAQ
What is the best Lago alternative for teams that don't want to self-host?
Kribana is the strongest fit if you want everything Lago's Premium tier offers — portal, invoicing, dunning — as a finished, fully hosted product rather than a self-hosted deployment or a Premium sales quote. Chargebee and Stripe Billing are also fully hosted, but neither has Lago's or Kribana's native credit-wallet primitives.
Is Lago actually free?
The self-hosted, open-source core is free under the AGPLv3 license — no per-event fees or revenue share. But the customer portal, invoicing UI and automatic dunning live behind the paid Premium tier, which is quote-only whether you run it on Lago Cloud or self-hosted. So 'free' covers the metering and billing API, not the full customer-facing product.
How hard is it to migrate off Lago?
It depends on the destination. Kribana ships a native importer for Lago's usage events and invoice history, so most teams go live in one to two weeks running in parallel before cutover. Moving to Orb or Metronome involves an API export and manual re-mapping since there's no vendor-provided switch path from Lago, which typically takes longer.
Does Lago support prepaid credits and wallets?
Yes, at the API level — Lago exposes credit and prepaid balance primitives you can build on. Kribana is the only tool on this list that ships credit wallets as a finished product with top-ups and low-balance alerts built in, rather than primitives you assemble yourself.
Why would a team leave Lago's open-source core?
Usually because self-hosting has become an operational burden — owning uptime, upgrades and infrastructure for billing — or because they need the customer portal, invoicing UI and automated dunning that only ship on the quote-only Premium tier. Teams that want those finished without a sales conversation typically move to a fully hosted platform instead.
Which Lago alternative is right for you?
If self-hosting an open-source core is genuinely a feature for you — full control, no per-event fees, no vendor lock-in — Lago's free tier still makes sense, as long as you're prepared to own the infrastructure. If you want Lago's credit-primitive philosophy without the self-hosting or the Premium sales quote, Kribana ships the same idea as a finished, fully hosted product. If your pricing is subscription-first with usage bolted on, Chargebee fits better; if you're fully committed to Stripe as your only processor, Stripe Billing is the simplest integration.
Want the detailed feature-by-feature breakdown instead? See Kribana vs. Lago.