> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://lago-ftr-wallet-improvements.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# About the software

## 1. How popular is the software?

Lago has thousands of users, thousands of stars on Github and great investors.
Lago is the most popular open-source repository solving for billing on Github, to give you a point of reference, the second most popular one was started ten years ago, Lago caught up fast!
It has been chosen by companies like:

* [Pennylane](https://www.pennylane.com/) – the best Quickbooks alternative for SMBs, backed by Sequoia Capital.
* [Swan](https://swan.io) – the leading European Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), backed by Accel and Creandum.
* [Flipside Crypto](https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/) – a leading provider of on-demand analytics and business intelligence for blockchain, backed by CoinBase Ventures.

and many more.
To hear firsthand experiences from our users, explore Lago's [love wall](https://shoutout.io/lago).

## 2. Is the software updated regularly?

We release new versions every 2-3 weeks, our team is working relentlessly to improve the product.
Sign up to our newsletter, or follow us on [Linkedin](https://fr.linkedin.com/company/getlago) or [X](https://twitter.com/getlago?lang=en) (fka Twitter).
Our past product updates are [here](https://www.getlago.com/resources/updates).

## 3. How is this different from the other billing tools?

Lago is the only open source metering and usage-based billing solution. A lot of closed source (aka ‘SaaS’) solutions exist
(e.g., Chargebee, Stripe Billing, Zuora) but they require you to send your data to third-parties, to blindly trust a
‘black box’ with your most critical internal system (billing / revenue) and they take a cut on your revenue.
Some billing solutions will even force you to only use another of their product, for instance: if you use ‘Stripe Billing’,
you can only use one payment processor, called ‘Stripe Payments’.

We have put together these [product comparisons](https://www.getlago.com/resources/compare/compare-home) if you want to go further.

There are multiple open source billing offerings - Invoice Plane, myBillBook etc. However, Lago is the only open source software that gives you:

1. Real-time event-based usage metering (you won’t need to handle any consumption calculation on your side)
2. Subscription billing
3. Hybrid plans, mixing subscription and consumption (e.g., a usage-based billing plan that requires a recurring minimum spend per month)
4. A full fledge API to automate ‘self-serve/product-led’ plans, and an intuitive no-code user interface to configure ‘custom/enterprise’ plans
5. Additional features including: instant charges, modular couponing, spending minimums, grace periods, etc.