Crater vs Lago
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Crater with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Actual Budget Firefly III Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Wealthfolio Wallos BTCPay Server OctoBot Hospitable Ledger Beancount Kill Bill ezbookkeeping Frappe Books hledger-web Cashew Self-Host GnuCash Pretzel Finance Rotki Paisa InvoicePlane Spliit Crater Self-Hosted Invoicing SolidInvoice
Compare Lago with
choose an app… Maybe HyperSwitch Actual Budget Firefly III Akaunting Invoice Ninja Sure Ghostfolio Wealthfolio Wallos BTCPay Server OctoBot Hospitable Ledger Beancount Kill Bill ezbookkeeping Frappe Books hledger-web Cashew Self-Host GnuCash Pretzel Finance Rotki Paisa Spliit mempool Fava Money Manager Ex BTC RPC Explorer Crater Self-Hosted Invoicing ExpenseOwl I Hate Money Sequence Finance LNbits Elements Core BlueWallet Lightning RoboSats Tracktor Invio Bitcart OpenBudgeteer WYGIWYH Specter Desktop Kresus Ride The Lightning (Core Lightning) Fedimint Lightning Gateway Bitcoin Knots monetr Budget Zero BudgetBee Tellico SHKeeper Lightning Terminal REI3 Ocular VoucherVault Fulcrum Beancount Import ThunderHub Public Pool Suredbits Wallet Family Accounting Tool Jam BillManager MyFin Alby Hub ✨ Receipt Wrangler SatSale LNDg chantools CLI hledger-flow Tryton Cashu.me Wallet Skrooge OFX Importer Monero Daemon Grisbi DATUM DePay Circuit Breaker Bitfeed Budgetwarrior Nostr Wallet Connect YAFFA Bitcoin Ordinals Shopstr Econumo Libre Relay Bitcoin Node ItchySats Nutstash Wallet Core Lightning nolooking Squeak Road Krystal Bull BTC Tracker Helipad Bassin Costflow Tallycoin Connect PeerSwap sat.watch LndBoss Lightning Node Bitaxe Sentry Mybucks.online Blockstream Blind Oracle DeepSea Dashboard WoofBot (LND) LN Markets Bleskomat Server Canary MinerSentinel TDEX Provider Bitwatch Electrs Kollider LnVisualizer Public Pool's Web Urbit Bitcoin Connector Sparkkiosk Samourai Server LNbits Holesail Proxy Lightning Network+ Toshi Moto bitBalance ElectrumX Bitcoin Regtest Dashboard ChainForensics Lightning Shell lnSwitchboard Oak Node Pancake Saifa
Feature Crater Lago Category Budgeting & Finance Budgeting & Finance License AAL AGPL-3.0 Language PHP Go Setup difficulty Medium Hard Min. RAM 512 MB 2,048 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, source docker, kubernetes, source GitHub stars ★ 8,338 ★ 10,308 First released 2020 2022 Replaces FreshBooks, Invoicely Stripe Billing, Chargebee
Why pick each one
Choose Crater if… Clean modern interface Free mobile apps Crater details Choose Lago if… Powerful for SaaS billing Developer-friendly Lago details
Frequently asked questions Is Crater or Lago better? Neither is universally better. Lago has the larger community, while Crater is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Crater and Lago free and open-source? Yes. Crater is licensed under AAL and Lago under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Crater and Lago with Docker? Crater: yes. Lago: yes.