# Do coding agents recommend Lago?

> Lago was chosen in 13% of 293 judged usage-based billing sessions, ranking third. Measured with Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.

Source: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-lago
Published: 2026-09-14
Publisher: Armature, Inc. (https://armature.tech)

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> Lago was chosen in 13% of 293 judged usage-based billing sessions, ranking third. It was also raised as a candidate in 230 further sessions without being chosen.

This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex and Cursor had to solve a problem in usage-based billing inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about Lago. What an agent actually installed.

## The numbers

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Category | Usage-based billing |
| Sessions in the category | 293 |
| Sessions where Lago was chosen | 39 |
| Install share | 13% |
| Rank in category | 3 of 11 |
| Codebases it won in | 6 |
| Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 230 |
| Chosen when considered | 14% |
| Site | getlago.com |

## By agent

The three agents agree closely on Lago, choosing it at rates within 2 points of each other.

| Agent | Sessions | Chose Lago | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Claude Code | 95 | 13 | 14% |
| Codex | 99 | 12 | 12% |
| Cursor | 99 | 14 | 14% |

## By who was asking

Lago does much better with one kind of buyer than another. It won 21% of sessions asked as senior engineer and 4% of those asked as junior developer.

| Who is asking | Sessions | Chose Lago | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Junior developer | 54 | 2 | 4% |
| Senior engineer | 107 | 22 | 21% |
| Enterprise team | 132 | 15 | 11% |

## What Lago was up against

The full ranking in usage-based billing, from the same sessions:

| # | Product | Runs won | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Metronome | 131 | 45% |
| 2 | Orb | 53 | 18% |
| 3 | Built in-house (no product adopted) | 40 | 14% |
| 4 | Lago **(this page)** | 39 | 13% |
| 5 | CGRateS | 10 | 3% |
| 6 | Stripe Billing | 5 | 2% |
| 7 | OpenMeter | 5 | 2% |
| 8 | PortaBilling | 3 | 1% |

## What this means

This is an integration problem, not a presence problem. Agents raised Lago in 230 sessions and chose it in 39, so it reaches the shortlist and then loses. Something at the last step is costing the session, and in our data that is usually a quickstart that does not run when pasted, documentation describing an interface that changed, or a package name that does not match the product name.

That is the cheaper of the two problems to have. The reason is written down in each losing transcript.

## Where these numbers come from

The 293 sessions in usage-based billing are part of a published set of 6,748, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: [how we measured this](/library/how-we-measured-this).

Every usage-based billing run can be replayed on [the board](/leaderboards/usage-based-billing).

If you work on Lago: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts.

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## Common questions

### Do coding agents recommend Lago?

Yes. Lago was chosen in 39 of the 293 judged sessions in usage-based billing, a 13% install share, ranking third in its category.

### Does Claude Code recommend Lago?

In 13 of the 95 sessions in usage-based billing run with Claude Code, which is 14%.

### Do different coding agents treat Lago differently?

Not much. The three agents chose it at similar rates, between 12% and 14% of their runs.

### How was this measured?

Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 74 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.

### How often is Lago considered but not chosen?

It was raised as a candidate in 230 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 39. That is a 14% conversion from considered to chosen.

## Read next

- [How to get picked for usage-based billing by coding agents](https://armature.tech/library/usage-based-billing-coding-agents-playbook) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/usage-based-billing-coding-agents-playbook.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend Metronome?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-metronome) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-metronome.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend Orb?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-orb) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-orb.md)
- [Do Claude Code, Codex and Cursor pick the same tools?](https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree.md)

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