Lago

Lago is an open-source billing platform designed for SaaS companies that require flexible and scalable pricing models. Founded in 2021 by Anh-Tho Chuong and Raffi Sarkissian, the company originated from the founders' experiences at the French fintech unicorn Qonto, where they identified significant bottlenecks in traditional billing systems. Chuong, the CEO, has a background in B2B SaaS go-to-market strategies, while CPO Sarkissian is a growth product and data expert. Their shared experience at Qonto, which involved a team of over 10 engineers dedicated solely to billing, inspired them to create a more efficient solution.

The company participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch and has since raised a total of $22.1 million. This includes a $7 million seed round led by SignalFire and a $15 million Series A round led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from investors like New Wave and notable angel investors. Lago is headquartered in Paris, France, and is expanding its presence in the US.

Lago's core product is an API-first platform that enables businesses to manage complex billing logic, including usage-based, subscription-based, and hybrid pricing models. The platform is built to handle high-volume, event-driven usage metering, processing up to 15,000 events per second. This allows companies, particularly in the AI and IoT sectors, to accurately bill for consumption of resources like tokens, compute hours, or data usage. Key features include real-time usage metering, subscription management, automated invoicing, revenue analytics, and entitlements management. The system supports prepaid credits, one-time charges, and customizable plans, providing flexibility for both self-serve and sales-led business motions.

As an open-source solution, Lago offers businesses transparency and control over their billing infrastructure, allowing them to avoid the "black box" nature of many third-party systems. It provides both a free, self-hosted version and a cloud-based offering. The platform integrates with various payment providers, CRMs, and ERP systems, such as Stripe, Salesforce, and NetSuite. Lago serves a range of clients from startups to large enterprises, including prominent names like Mistral.ai, PayPal, Groq, and Synthesia.

Keywords: open-source billing, usage-based billing, metering platform, subscription management, API-first billing, FinOps, revenue analytics, event-based billing, hybrid pricing, SaaS monetization, payment orchestration, invoicing automation, Y Combinator, fintech infrastructure, pricing flexibility, prepaid credits, entitlements management, AI billing, IoT billing, pay-as-you-go