AGPL-3.0 and MIT are open-source licenses at opposite ends of the copyleft spectrum. MIT is a short permissive license: you can modify, redistribute, and re-license the software (including in closed-source products) as long as the copyright notice travels with it. AGPL-3.0 is the strongest commonly used copyleft license: if you offer a modified version of the software to users over a network, you must make your modified source available to those users under the same AGPL-3.0 terms. The clause is specifically designed to close the "SaaS loophole" of regular GPL.

In a self-hosting context

License choice is the single biggest predictor of "is this OSS still alive in five years" for a self-hostable SaaS replacement. AGPL-3.0 is dominant in this directory — see the full AGPL-3.0 tools on os-alt list — because it lets the original maintainers run a commercial managed offering while keeping the self-hostable path open. MIT tools on os-alt ships permissively-licensed alternatives like Plausible Analytics (MIT-licensed) where the maintainers monetize via brand and managed hosting. Neither license blocks self-hosting; AGPL just constrains what a downstream SaaS competitor can do with the code.