Open Source Stripe Alternatives 2026

Stripe combines payment processing, billing, invoicing, retries, and lifecycle state. The projects in this guide address different layers of that system. Map the layer before comparing features: Lago and Kill Bill focus on billing and metering, Hyperswitch on payment orchestration plus documented subscription and invoicing flows, BTCPay Server on Bitcoin payments, and Invoice Ninja on recurring invoices.

TL;DR verdict

These projects are not "drop-in Stripe replacements." Lago and Kill Bill can own billing logic while payment processing remains a separate layer. Hyperswitch documents orchestration, subscriptions, and invoicing. BTCPay Server is self-hosted Bitcoin payment infrastructure. Invoice Ninja generates recurring invoices and can optionally charge them automatically. Select the layer you need before selecting software.

Key takeaways

The correct comparison is a layer map, not a ranking of unlike products.
Lago is AGPL-3.0 and keeps billing logic separate from payment processing.
Kill Bill core documents subscriptions, invoices, payments, multi-tenancy, and plugins; some metering or tax functions belong to premium Aviate extensions.
Current Hyperswitch documentation includes payment orchestration, subscriptions, and invoicing.
BTCPay advertises 0% BTCPay fees and no third party, but network, hosting, and operator costs still exist.
Invoice Ninja belongs in the recurring-invoice layer; its license status should not be generalized from feature documentation.

At-a-glance table

Project	Layer	Current evidence supports	Does not establish
Lago	Metering and billing	Pricing models, subscriptions, invoicing, payment-provider orchestration	A complete card-processing replacement or comparative leadership
Kill Bill	Subscription billing and payments infrastructure	Core subscriptions, invoices, payments, multi-tenancy, plugins	That every metering or tax feature is included in open-source core
Hyperswitch	Payment infrastructure	Orchestration, routing, vault, reconciliation, subscriptions, invoicing	A verified connector count or measured authorization improvement
BTCPay Server	Bitcoin payments	Self-hosted server, 0% BTCPay fees, no third party	Zero network, hosting, or operations cost
Invoice Ninja	Recurring invoices	Scheduled templates, automatic generation, optional auto-billing	SaaS metering or a verified open-source license conclusion from this source

Map the payment and billing layers

Stripe documentation treats Subscription, Invoice, and PaymentIntent as distinct lifecycle objects. That separation matters when designing a self-hosted stack:

Billing and metering calculate what a customer owes.
Invoicing turns that amount into a payable record.
Payment orchestration selects and coordinates payment connectors.
Payment processing moves money through regulated rails.
Bitcoin payment infrastructure uses a different payment path and operating model.

Lead with a layer map: billing/metering (Lago, Kill Bill), payment orchestration (Hyperswitch), Bitcoin payments (BTCPay), and invoicing (Invoice Ninja). The choices are not drop-in substitutes for the whole Stripe product surface.

Lago: billing logic and metering

Lago is AGPL-3.0 and provides metering, pricing, subscriptions, invoicing, and payment-provider orchestration while keeping billing logic separate from processors. That architecture can help a team own product and usage rules without pretending it has replaced the payment processor.

Evaluate event ingestion, aggregation rules, plan changes, invoice generation, provider integration, persistence, and recovery. The approved evidence does not establish a cloud price, an infrastructure budget, or a universal recommendation by company stage.

Kill Bill: core versus premium boundaries

Kill Bill core documents subscriptions, invoices, payments, multi-tenancy, and plugins; explicitly separate premium Aviate capabilities. Current documentation places some metering or tax functionality in premium extensions rather than in core.

Start the evaluation with a requirement-to-edition map. Confirm which subscription, invoice, payment, dunning, tax, and metering behaviors are core, which require plugins, and which require Aviate. Then test the exact combination you intend to run.

Hyperswitch: orchestration with broader documented flows

Hyperswitch current documentation includes payment orchestration plus subscriptions and invoicing; remove the categorical claim that it provides neither. Its documentation also covers routing, vault, reconciliation, and Docker or Helm self-hosting.

Do not turn those capabilities into an unverified connector count, failover guarantee, or authorization-rate claim. Test the providers, payment methods, routing rules, webhooks, reconciliation, and lifecycle flows you need.

BTCPay Server: Bitcoin payment infrastructure

BTCPay Server is self-hosted Bitcoin payment infrastructure advertised with 0% BTCPay fees and no third party; do not generalize that to zero network or operations cost. Hosting, node connectivity, backups, upgrades, payment confirmation policy, and incident response remain part of the deployment.

This payment model differs from card processing. Decide whether it fits the product before treating BTCPay as an implementation alternative.

Invoice Ninja: recurring invoices

Invoice Ninja documentation supports scheduled recurring-invoice templates, automatic invoice generation, and optional auto-billing. That narrower role can fit service billing or recurring invoices. The selected source does not support calling Invoice Ninja a metered SaaS billing engine, and its license classification requires separate evidence.

Flexprice: outside this approved evidence set

The prior guide included Flexprice, but this research packet did not verify its current maturity, resource profile, or production fit. It is not ranked or recommended here. A later comparison can add it after a review of current primary documentation.

Hosted vs self-hosted

Area	Hosted billing service	Self-hosted billing or payment module
Product scope	Defined by vendor plan and contract	Defined by repository, edition, plugins, and paid extensions
Infrastructure	Vendor-operated	Operator-owned deployment, database, backup, monitoring, and upgrades
Payment rails	Often integrated into one commercial surface	May remain a separate processor or a Bitcoin-specific path
Compliance	Shared according to provider and contract	Must be mapped to the actual data and payment flows you operate
Support	Vendor terms apply	Community, commercial, or internal support must be explicit

License and open-source status

Lago: AGPL-3.0 in the approved repository evidence.
Kill Bill: open-source core with some documented premium Aviate extensions.
Hyperswitch: evaluate the exact repository, modules, and hosted boundaries before adoption.
BTCPay documentation: the selected documentation states that its content is MIT-licensed; verify the software repositories used in your deployment.
Invoice Ninja: the recurring-invoice documentation owns feature claims, not an open-source license classification.

License review should be performed against the exact version, repository, extensions, and intended service model.

Maintenance burden

Billing systems combine state, money, retries, and external events. Self-hosting adds responsibility for database durability, secrets, webhooks, reconciliation, version upgrades, job queues, observability, backups, and restore testing. A successful container start does not prove that failed payments, duplicate events, proration, invoice correction, or recovery will behave correctly.

Migration checklist

Inventory current Stripe products, objects, webhooks, tax logic, and payment methods.
Assign each requirement to billing, invoicing, orchestration, processing, or Bitcoin payments.
Map the requirement to the exact open-source core, plugin, hosted, or premium boundary.
Replay representative subscriptions, usage events, invoices, refunds, failures, and retries.
Prove idempotency and reconciliation across provider webhooks.
Back up the billing database and test a restore with pending work.
Run a parallel ledger and reconcile before moving customer traffic.
Preserve a rollback path until invoices and payments match expected state.

Deployment model table

Model	Appropriate evaluation	Main gate
Local sandbox	Explore APIs and object models	Never use test success as production evidence
Single-node self-hosting	Bounded workloads with tested recovery	Database, queues, secrets, TLS, backups, monitoring
Redundant self-hosting	Payment-critical workloads	Supported topology, failover, consistency, and reconciliation
Managed product	Teams that prefer vendor operations	Exact feature, support, portability, and current pricing review
Hybrid billing plus processor	Own billing logic while keeping regulated payment rails	Contract boundaries, webhooks, idempotency, and data ownership

Source-backed evidence

Stripe: billing and payment processing are related but distinct layers.
Lago: AGPL-3.0; metering, pricing, subscriptions, invoicing, and payment-provider orchestration.
Kill Bill: core subscription, invoice, payment, multi-tenant, and plugin capabilities, with premium boundaries called out separately.
Hyperswitch: current orchestration, subscription, and invoicing documentation.
BTCPay: Bitcoin payment infrastructure and the exact 0% BTCPay-fee positioning.
Invoice Ninja: recurring-invoice templates, generation, and optional auto-billing.

The packet removes funding, star, connector-count, authorization-lift, cloud-price, infrastructure-cost, and revenue-crossover metrics because this evidence set does not supply a reproducible current method for them.

Methodology

OSSAlt reviewed the six primary sources below on 2026-08-21. Product capabilities are attributed only to the source that owns them. Comparative rankings, funding, popularity, prices, infrastructure estimates, processor counts, authorization improvements, and revenue thresholds were removed when they lacked current primary evidence and a reproducible method.

Stripe subscription lifecycle — accessed 2026-08-21
Lago official repository — accessed 2026-08-21
Kill Bill documentation — accessed 2026-08-21
Hyperswitch documentation — accessed 2026-08-21
BTCPay Server documentation — accessed 2026-08-21
Invoice Ninja recurring invoices — accessed 2026-08-21

See open-source alternatives to Stripe on OSSAlt.