# Lago vs Orb

> Orb and Lago score within a point of each other for usage billing, 66.5 and 65.7 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-orb
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-orb.md (~2,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-orb.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-orb.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Orb and Lago score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 66.5 (B) and 65.7 (B). Lago leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do usage billing.

- Lago: grade B, 65.7/100, rank #311 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lago.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lago.json
- Orb: grade B, 66.5/100, rank #289 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orb.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orb.json
- Best payment and monetisation platforms for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/payment-platforms/index.md
- All 76 platforms comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/payment-platforms/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Lago (B)

Good for: A team that wants usage metering, plans, wallets and invoicing under its own control and can run PostgreSQL and Redis.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 86 against 77
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 5
- Maintenance & community, 91 against 82

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: The free edition has one organisation API key with full access. Creating more keys needs a Premium licence and per-resource permissions need an enterprise add-on

### Orb (B)

Good for: A software or AI company that bills on usage and needs event metering, plan versioning, prepaid credits, invoicing and revenue reporting behind one API, with Stripe or Adyen collecting the money.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 84 against 71
- Security & auth, 55 against 37
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 59

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Lago loses 3 points for them

Watch for: All three plans (Core, Advanced, Enterprise) show custom pricing only, and the pricing page sends new customers to sales


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Lago | Orb | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 86 | 77 | Lago +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 88 | Orb +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 84 | Orb +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 37 | 55 | Orb +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 5 | Lago +45 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 91 | 82 | Lago +9 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 65 | Orb +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **65.7 · B** | **66.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Lago | Orb |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Get Lago Corp. | Orb, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.withorb.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 (platform). The MCP server and agent SDKs are MIT. Premium capabilities and Lago Cloud are commercial | Proprietary service under Orb's Platform Terms and Conditions. The SDKs on GitHub are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2024-11-13 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-05-07 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 11k stars, 48k npm/wk | 5 stars, 185k npm/wk |

## Verdicts

**Lago.** Lago's open-source edition runs usage metering, plans, wallets and invoicing on the owner's servers at no charge, with an OpenAPI 3.1 file of 217 operations and releases about every two weeks. The free edition has one unscoped API key and no audit logs, and Lago's llms.txt understates what its MCP server can change.

**Orb.** Orb suits a company that bills on usage and wants one API for events, plans, credits and invoices. It publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 file, numeric rate limits, idempotency keys and a dry-run header. Every plan is priced on request and access starts with sales. No scope list for API keys or public sub-processor list was found.

## Before you call either

### Lago

1. Call `<your Lago API origin>/api/v1` with `Authorization: Bearer <key>`. On Lago Cloud the hosts are `api.getlago.com` and `api.eu.getlago.com`
2. Send every usage event with a deterministic `transaction_id` and an explicit `timestamp`, and resend the same payload on retry. On the ClickHouse event store a changed timestamp is billed again
3. Expect 422 `value_already_exist` for a repeated event on the Postgres event store. Treat it as success for a retry
4. Page with `page` and `per_page` and read `meta.next_page` and `meta.total_count`. The default page size is 100 in most cases
5. Treat the free edition's API key as full access. It can void invoices and terminate subscriptions, so keep it out of prompts and ask a person before financial changes
6. Before giving an assistant the MCP server, note that it includes `delete_invoice`, `void_invoice`, `delete_plan` and `create_payment` and sets no read-only annotations

### Orb

1. Call `https://api.withorb.com/v1` with `Authorization: Bearer <key>`. A person creates the key in the Orb web app under organisation settings, in test mode or live mode
2. Send an `Idempotency-Key` of at most 64 characters on every POST and PATCH. A 409 means the first request is still running or the body changed
3. Add `Dry-Run: True` to check a write first, and confirm `Orb-Dry-Run: true` in the response. Ingest, amend and deprecate event calls ignore it and run for real
4. Do not send `Idempotency-Key` with `Dry-Run`. Orb returns a validation error
5. Page with `limit` (default 20, maximum 100) and pass `next_cursor` back as `cursor` while `has_more` is true
6. Back off exponentially on 429. Test mode allows 5 writes a second and 2,000 ingested events a minute

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Lago or Orb?

Orb and Lago score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 66.5 (B) and 65.7 (B). Lago leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Do Lago and Orb need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Lago and Orb without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Lago. Orb has a hosted endpoint at https://api.withorb.com/v1.

### Are Lago and Orb open source?

Lago is open source (AGPL-3.0 (platform). The MCP server and agent SDKs are MIT. Premium capabilities and Lago Cloud are commercial). No open-source release is listed for Orb.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-orb.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-orb.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "lago", "b": "orb"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare lago orb`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lago.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orb.json

## Other comparisons with Lago or Orb

- [ATXP vs Lago](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atxp-vs-lago.md)
- [ATXP vs Orb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atxp-vs-orb.md)
- [Lago vs Metronome](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-metronome.md)
- [Lago vs Nevermined API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-nevermined.md)
- [Lago vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-paid.md)
- [Lago vs Stripe API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-stripe-mcp.md)
- [Lago vs Tempo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-tempo.md)
- [Metronome vs Orb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/metronome-vs-orb.md)
- [Nevermined API + MCP vs Orb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nevermined-vs-orb.md)
- [Orb vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-paid.md)
- [Orb vs Stripe API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-stripe-mcp.md)
- [Orb vs Tempo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-tempo.md)
- [Adyen MCP server vs Lago](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adyen-mcp-server-vs-lago.md)
- [Adyen MCP server vs Orb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adyen-mcp-server-vs-orb.md)
- [Crossmint API + Docs MCP vs Lago](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crossmint-vs-lago.md)
- [Crossmint API + Docs MCP vs Orb](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crossmint-vs-orb.md)
- [Lago vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-payman.md)
- [Lago vs Skyfire API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-skyfire.md)
- [Orb vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-payman.md)
- [Orb vs Skyfire API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-skyfire.md)