Is Cosign or Lago better?

Neither clearly leads. Cosign starts at Free and Lago at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Cosign or Lago?

Cosign starts at Free and Lago at Free.

Does Cosign or Lago run on more platforms?

Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Lago runs on Web, Cloud, Self-hosted, On-premise, VPC.

Can I use Cosign for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Cosign best used for?

Cosign is most often used for signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keys, attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenance, meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifacts, verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registry. Of those, signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keys and attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenance are not what Lago is typically brought in for.

What can Cosign do that Lago cannot?

Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations. Lago covers Real-time usage metering, Multiple pricing models, Automated invoicing, Prepaid credits.

Cybersecurity · head to head

Cosign vs Lago

Cosign

Cybersecurity

Signs and verifies container images and artifacts, with or without managing keys

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Lago

Accounting

Open-source billing infrastructure for usage-based models

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Cosign keyless signing inherits every weakness of the identity provider behind it. Sigstore’s own threat model states that if an identity provider is compromised, Sigstore will issue certificates to those identities, so a compromised account produces perfectly valid signatures.; Lago free tier limited to 10,000 entities per month with 5M event cap
They diverge on capability: Cosign covers Keyless signing, Lago covers Real-time usage metering.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cosign and Lago actually diverge.

Attributes where Cosign and Lago differ
Attribute	Cosign	Lago
Pricing model	Open source, no licence fee	Freemium with optional paid tiers
Platforms	macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker	Web, Cloud, Self-hosted, On-premise, VPC
Category	Cybersecurity	Accounting

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cosign

Keyless signing
Key and KMS signing
Registry-native storage
In-toto attestations
Offline verification
Trusted root and signing config

Only in Lago

Real-time usage metering
Multiple pricing models
Automated invoicing
Prepaid credits
Entitlements
Multi-currency support
Payment orchestration
Revenue analytics

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cosign

Signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keysnot Lago
Attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenancenot Lago
Meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifactsnot Lago
Verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registrynot Lago

Lago

Building usage-based billing for high-volume APIs and infrastructurenot Cosign
Implementing metered billing for AI and tokenized servicesnot Cosign
Creating subscription and hybrid pricing modelsnot Cosign
Managing multi-currency billing for global companiesnot Cosign
Maintaining billing infrastructure without vendor lock-innot Cosign

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cosign

Keyless signing inherits every weakness of the identity provider behind it. Sigstore’s own threat model states that if an identity provider is compromised, Sigstore will issue certificates to those identities, so a compromised account produces perfectly valid signatures.
A signature proves who signed, never whether they should have. The documentation is explicit that Sigstore cannot determine authorisation, so every consumer must write and maintain their own identity and issuer policy or verification means nothing.
Nothing is enforced without an admission controller. Signing changes what you can prove, not what runs, and the official policy controller has a small maintainer base for a component sitting in a cluster admission path.
Upgrades break pipelines. Version 3 changed defaults, version 4 is announced as removing legacy functionality and roughly half the command line flags, and two official client libraries still lacked support for the new log format as of mid 2026.
Signatures do not expire. An artifact signed before a maintainer account was compromised and one signed after are indistinguishable unless somebody is actively monitoring the transparency log, and almost nobody is.

Lago

Free tier limited to 10,000 entities per month with 5M event cap
No specific pricing published for Pro annual plan or Scale plan
Self-hosted and on-premise deployments require engineering resources
Community support only on free tier
Scale plan requires annual contracts and sales engagement

Pricing, plan by plan

Cosign

Free

CosignFree
- Apache-2.0
- Public Sigstore infrastructure free to use
- No usage limits published

Lago

Free

Build (Free)Free
- 10,000 managed entities per month
- 5M usage events per month
- 1K events per second rate limit
Pro$399/month
- 10,000 entities included (graduated pricing to 100K)
- 25M usage events included (to 500M with graduated rates)
- 10K events per second (upgradeable to 100K)
Scale$null/custom
- Custom entity and event volumes
- 50K events per second (upgradeable to 100K)
- RBAC and SSO (SAML)

Which should you pick?

Choose Cosign if

You need keyless signing.
You want to start without paying.
You work on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
You also want key and kms signing.

Cosign review

Choose Lago if

You need real-time usage metering.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Web, Cloud, Self-hosted, On-premise, VPC.
You also want multiple pricing models.

Lago review

Questions people ask

Is Cosign or Lago better?: Neither clearly leads. Cosign starts at Free and Lago at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cosign or Lago?: Cosign starts at Free and Lago at Free.
Does Cosign or Lago run on more platforms?: Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Lago runs on Web, Cloud, Self-hosted, On-premise, VPC.
Can I use Cosign for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Cosign best used for?: Cosign is most often used for signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keys, attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenance, meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifacts, verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registry. Of those, signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keys and attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenance are not what Lago is typically brought in for.
What can Cosign do that Lago cannot?: Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations. Lago covers Real-time usage metering, Multiple pricing models, Automated invoicing, Prepaid credits.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cosign: Does Cosign tell me if an image is vulnerable?

No. It has no vulnerability knowledge whatsoever. It can carry an SBOM as a signed attestation but never reads it. Pair it with a scanner.

Lago: Can I use Lago open-source for free?

Yes, Lago is open-source under the AGPLv3 license and can be self-hosted. The cloud-based Build plan is also free with limits of 10,000 entities and 5M events per month.

Source

Cosign: Is signing alone enough?

No. Verification is a command somebody runs. Without an admission controller enforcing it, an unsigned image still runs.

Lago: What payment providers does Lago integrate with?

Lago integrates with Stripe and Adyen for payment processing. It is not a payment processor itself but orchestrates payments through these providers.

Source

Cosign: What does a bare cosign verify actually prove?

Very little. Without a pinned certificate identity and OIDC issuer, it accepts a valid signature from any identity at all.

Lago: Does Lago support multiple currencies?

Yes, Lago supports multi-currency billing with automatic currency conversion for global businesses.

Source

Cosign: What is the risk of keyless signing?

Your OIDC provider becomes the root of trust. Compromise of that account yields genuine, verifiable signatures, so account security is the control that matters.

Cosign: Should we expect breaking changes?

Yes. Version 4 is announced to remove roughly half the flags, and a post-quantum migration is named as a further breaking change after that.

Cosign vs Lago

Cosign

Lago

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Cosign

Only in Lago

What people use each for

Cosign

Lago

Where each one falls short

Cosign

Lago

Pricing, plan by plan

Cosign

Lago

Which should you pick?

Choose Cosign if

Choose Lago if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Cosign

More on Lago

Keep looking

Other head to heads