Lago vs Layer7 API Management

Lago is an open-source billing platform that connects product usage and commercial terms with customer invoices. It supports usage-based, subscription, prepaid, and hybrid pricing, plus quotes, order forms, prepaid credits, entitlements, quotas, subscription and usage charges, and itemized invoices. For AI products, Lago can meter input, output, and cached tokens separately and assign usage to customers for billing. Applications can connect through a REST API, official JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and Go SDKs, or signed webhooks. Listed AI integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini, and Mistral; payment and finance integrations include Adyen, Stripe, NetSuite, and Xero. The Open source plan is free, licensed under AGPLv3 and self-hosted. Lago Premium is available as cloud or self-hosted deployment, including on-premises or in a VPC, but pricing is provided after contacting Lago. Lago states it is SOC 2 Type II certified and describes single sign-on, role-based access controls, and audit logs. Premium includes platform support, business-hours incident management, and implementation guidance.

Layer7 API Management is a platform for publishing, documenting, governing, and operating APIs through an API portal. Publishers can manage an API's lifecycle, while consumers onboard, browse available APIs, receive an API key and shared secret, and view consumption metrics. Teams can define policies such as approved authentication methods and required threat protection. API Products group collections of APIs with usage-limitation tiers, centralized documentation, and interactive testing. Portal actions can also be automated through the Portal API. Security controls include single sign-on, multifactor authentication with biometrics, and fine-grained authorization. Layer7 lists OWASP API Security Top 10 defense, Common Criteria Certification, FIPS 140-2 compliance, and STIG hardening. Deployment can be on-premises, SaaS, or hybrid, using hardware, software, virtual, or container forms. Supported standards and transports include REST, SOAP, GraphQL, OAuth 2.0, LDAP, SAML, MQTT, RabbitMQ, Kafka, JMS, WebSockets, HTTP(S), and FTP(S). Pricing is on request; the SaaS plan includes one production environment, with extra instances or environments costing extra.