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Head to head · Usage billing · October 2026 research run

Lago vs Paid

Lago scores 65.7 (B) on agent readiness against Paid's 55.1 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Paid leads on security & auth. Both do usage billing.

Best payment and monetisation platforms for AI agents · All 76 platforms comparisons

LagoGet Lago Corp. · HTTP API B65.7/100#311 of 950 PaidAgent Paid Limited · HTTP API C55.1/100#669 of 950

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 35
  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 64
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 91 against 77
  • Transparency & trust, 59 against 51

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

Paid C

Good for A team selling an AI agent that needs usage metering, credit balances, cost and margin tracking and invoicing in one service, with Stripe as the payment rail.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 65 against 37

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Lago loses 3 points for them

Watch for

The docs index advertises an OpenAPI 3.1 file at two addresses, and both returned 404 on 9 October 2026

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLagoPaidEdge
Reliability16%208635Lago +51
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28764Lago +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.27170Lago +1
Security & auth14%17.53765Paid +28
Payments & pricing10%12.55030Lago +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89177Lago +14
Transparency & trust7%8.85951Lago +8
Negative events≤15-30
Total65.7 · B55.1 · C

Facts side by side

FactLagoPaid
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorGet Lago Corp.Agent Paid Limited
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.agentpaid.io/api/v2
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0 (platform). The MCP server and agent SDKs are MIT. Premium capabilities and Lago Cloud are commercialProprietary service under Paid's Master Subscription Agreement. The Node and Python SDKs on GitHub are MIT
Read-only variant documentedyesyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-09-15
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity11k stars, 48k npm/wk24k 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.

Paid

Paid suits a builder who wants usage metering, credits and invoicing behind one API, with restricted and customer-bound keys, OAuth on the MCP server and a free plan that needs no card. No status page, SLA figure, API changelog or rate-limit numbers were found, both advertised OpenAPI links returned 404, and card payments need the builder's own Stripe account.

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

Paid

  1. Call https://api.agentpaid.io/api/v2 with Authorization: Bearer <key>. A person creates the first key at app.paid.ai. No programmatic signup was found
  2. Give every signal a stable idempotencyKey and resend the same key on retry. Signals without one are not deduplicated
  3. Send at most 500 signals a request. A 429 rejects the whole batch, so wait for Retry-After and resend it all
  4. Read the code field on a 429. CONCURRENCY_LIMIT_EXCEEDED carries no Retry-After and clears when an analytics query finishes
  5. Install the Python SDK as paid-python, the name in its README and pyproject.toml. The quickstart's pip install paid names a package we could not check

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Lago or Paid?

Lago scores 65.7 (B) on agent readiness against Paid's 55.1 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Paid leads on security & auth.

Do Lago and Paid need an API key?

Lago needs an API key. Paid takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Lago and Paid without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Lago. Paid has a hosted endpoint at https://api.agentpaid.io/api/v2.

Are Lago and Paid 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 Paid.

Other comparisons with Lago or Paid

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