Lotus
Open Source Pricing & Packaging Infrastructure
Lotus is an open-source billing and subscriptions project on GitHub under the MIT license (permissive), with 1.8k stars. It is built with CPython and TypeScript. Its last push was 7 days ago.
- Stars
- 1.8k
- License
- MIT
- Activity
- Active
- Latest release
- 0.10.2
Judgement
- What it is
- Building block
- What it does
- A pricing and billing engine for SaaS subscriptions and usage-based plans, with a control panel for designing and testing pricing.
- Adopt it when
- A SaaS team wants to experiment with pricing models on a self-hosted engine.
- Watch out
- Still pre-1.0, self-hosting is the only option, and default admin credentials must be changed.
- Ready for
- Experimental
- Runs as
- Self-hosted server
- Built with
- Python, Django, TypeScript and Go
- How established
- Established: started 4 years ago, latest release 0.10.2.
- What the license allows
- You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.
Built from
Follow it down: Lotus → CPython → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip
Open-source alternatives to Lotus
-
1
Lago getlago
Open Source Metering and Usage Based Billing API ⭐️ Consumption tracking, Subscription management, Pricing iterations, Payment orchestration & Revenue analytics
Building block Production-ready A software or AI company bills on usage and wants an open-source alternative to Stripe Billing or Orb it can self-host.
★ 11k AGPL-3.0 Go Active, pushed 6 days ago -
2
Polar polarsource
Polar — A billing platform for the intelligence era
Complete system Production-ready You sell software or digital products internationally and want tax handling and billing done for you.
★ 10k Apache-2.0 Python Active, pushed today -
3
Flexprice flexprice
Usage-based pricing and billing for developers 🔓 Cloud or self-hosted ⚙️ No-code UI 💰 Realtime usage metering 🎟 Credits & top-ups 🔑 Control feature access
Building block Usable An AI product sells credits or usage tiers and wants an open-source billing backend.
★ 6.9k AGPL-3.0 Go Active, pushed yesterday -
4
Killbill killbill
Open-Source Subscription Billing & Payments Platform
Building block Production-ready A company with Java engineers needs mature subscription billing it fully controls, at scale.
★ 5.8k Apache-2.0 Java Active, pushed 11 days ago -
5
Paymenter Paymenter
Free and open-source webshop solution for hostings
Complete system Usable You run a small game or web hosting business and want a free alternative to WHMCS.
★ 2.8k MIT PHP Active, pushed today -
6
Cashier-stripe laravel
Laravel Cashier provides an expressive, fluent interface to Stripe's subscription billing services.
Integration Production-ready You are building a Laravel SaaS and charging through Stripe.
★ 2.5k MIT PHP Active, pushed 13 days ago -
7
OpenMeter openmeterio
Metering and Billing for AI, API and DevOps. Collect and aggregate millions of usage events in real-time and enable usage-based billing.
Building block Usable You run an API or AI product and need accurate metering, with billing optional.
★ 2.4k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today -
8
Pay pay-rails
Payments for Ruby on Rails apps
Integration Production-ready You are building a Rails SaaS and want one billing API that can switch payment providers.
★ 2.3k MIT Ruby Active, pushed today
Commercial billing and subscription management systems
-
1
Stripe Billing Stripe, Inc.
Power your subscriptions with Stripe Billing. Set up recurring and usage-based pricing with APIs or within the Dashboard. Reduce churn with AI-powered tools.
Complete system Production-ready You already use Stripe Payments and want recurring billing set up through its API or dashboard with little extra work.
Commercial -
2
GoCardless GoCardless
Collect and send payments, minimise failures, and fight fraud. No more chasing payments and no expensive card fees.
Complete system Production-ready You collect regular invoices or subscriptions and want lower fees and fewer failures than cards.
406 readers a month Since 2011 Commercial -
3
Zuora Zuora
Zuora is the leading Quote to Cash and subscription management platform, unifying billing, payments, revenue, and AR to scale your modern monetization.
Complete system Production-ready A large company with complex subscription and usage contracts needs billing and ASC 606 revenue recognition at enterprise scale.
315 readers a month Since 2007 Commercial -
4
Zoho Billing Zoho Corporation
Complete system Production-ready A small subscription business wants cheap recurring billing and already uses Zoho accounting.
Commercial -
5
Recurly Recurly
Recurly powers subscription management and recurring billing for high-volume digital commerce. Launch, retain, and scale with a platform that handles billions in annual payments for leading brands.
Complete system Production-ready A high-volume consumer subscription business wants strong failed-payment recovery and gateway flexibility.
Commercial -
6
Chargebee Chargebee
Complete system Production-ready A subscription business has outgrown Stripe Billing's defaults and wants gateway choice, finance reporting and a no-code billing admin.
Commercial
Stars, license and activity come from GitHub and refresh on a rolling hourly schedule. The project's own description is quoted as written.