Open-core pricing and billing engine for SaaS companies
HQ: New York, NY | Founded: 2022 | Employees: 2 | Stage: Seed | Website: https://uselotus.io
Lotus is an open-core pricing and billing engine for SaaS and API companies. The self-hosted software (MIT license, free on GitHub) provides usage-based, per-seat, and hybrid pricing models with built-in experimentation tools (backtests, A/B tests, forecasts). Runs on Docker with PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB, Redis, Celery, and Redpanda. Acts as a pricing intelligence layer between product usage data and payment processors (Stripe integration). Founded in 2022 by Mikael Nida (CEO) and Diego Escobedo (CTO). Nida graduated MIT with two degrees in Computer Science and Physics, worked at DE Shaw and Lyft. Escobedo graduated MIT in Computer Science. YC Summer 2022 batch. Raised $500K from Y Combinator. Self-hosted open-source (MIT) + paid cloud/enterprise tiers. 1,828 GitHub stars. HQ in New York City.
Lotus has a differentiated open-core approach in a space dominated by proprietary solutions (Stripe Billing, Chargebee, Recurly). The self-hosted option with MIT license appeals to companies wanting data control. 1,800+ GitHub stars indicate community interest. Strong technical founders (MIT, DE Shaw, Lyft). Key risk: competing with Stripe Billing (free with Stripe), Metronome, and Lago (also open-source YC-backed). Small team (2 founders) may struggle with enterprise sales.
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