Chargebee
Subscription billing and revenue management for recurring businesses
Lotus
Flexible pricing engine for SaaS, usage‑based and custom plans
Lotus delivers a self‑hosted, extensible engine for creating usage‑based, per‑seat, and custom subscription plans, with built‑in experimentation tools and seamless integration into existing payment and data stacks.
Overview
Overview
Lotus is a self‑hosted pricing and billing engine designed for SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and any product that needs flexible monetization. It lets product and engineering teams define usage‑based, per‑seat, or bespoke enterprise plans without rewriting core billing logic, and provides a control panel to version, deploy, and monitor those plans.
Capabilities & Deployment
Built on a Python/Django backend, Go micro‑services, and a React‑TypeScript UI, Lotus integrates with PostgreSQL (TimescaleDB), Redpanda, Redis and Celery to handle real‑time usage tracking and background processing. A simple Docker‑based self‑host script spins up the full stack locally, and environment variables let you connect to existing payment gateways, CRM, or analytics platforms. The extensible framework supports custom pricing formulas, back‑testing, A/B experiments and forecasting, all accessible through a well‑documented API.
Highlights
Usage‑Based Pricing & Flexible Prorations
Intuitive Plan Management with versioning
Experimentation suite for back‑testing, A/B, forecasting
Extensible API and integrations with existing stacks
Pros
- MIT‑licensed open source gives full freedom
- Self‑hosted deployment ensures data control
- Modular architecture supports custom pricing models
- Built on proven tech stack (Python, Go, React)
Considerations
- Only self‑hosted; no managed SaaS offering
- Initial Docker setup may require dev expertise
- Out‑of‑the‑box analytics dashboards are limited
- Requires PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB for full features
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Fit guide
Great for
- SaaS startups needing custom or usage‑based billing
- Product teams that want to experiment with pricing
- Enterprises requiring on‑prem data sovereignty
- Companies with existing payment or CRM integrations
Not ideal when
- Businesses seeking a fully managed hosted solution
- Small teams without technical resources for Docker
- Organizations that need extensive ready‑made analytics UI
- Projects limited to non‑Python back‑ends only
How teams use it
Metered API billing
Automated real‑time usage tracking and invoicing for a cloud API product
Pricing A/B test for new tier
Data‑driven decision on price impact and conversion rates
Unified payment gateway layer
Consolidated multiple providers into a single pricing engine, reducing engineering overhead
Legacy pricing migration
Modular system replaces custom code, enabling faster iteration and maintenance
Tech snapshot
Python57%
TypeScript41%
Go1%
CSS1%
JavaScript1%
Dockerfile1%
Frequently asked questions
What deployment options are available?
Lotus is currently offered only as a self‑hosted solution that runs via Docker on any platform supporting Docker.
Which database does Lotus use?
It uses PostgreSQL with the TimescaleDB extension for time‑series data storage.
How can Lotus integrate with existing payment gateways?
Lotus provides API hooks and adapters; you can connect Stripe, Braintree, or other providers through custom integration code.
Is there a UI for managing plans?
Yes, a React/TypeScript control panel lets you create, version, and monitor pricing plans.
Under what license is Lotus released?
Lotus is released under the MIT license, allowing free commercial and private use.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 1,814
- Watchers
- 1,814
- Forks
- 131
LicenseMIT
Repo age3 years old
Last commit2 days ago
Self-hostingSupported
Primary languagePython
Last synced 4 hours ago