head to head · open source
cognee vs Agenta
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Agenta has 4,766 stars, 674 forks, 309 open issues and last shipped today. cognee leads on adoption by 547% (30,848 vs 4,766 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Agenta is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Agenta 14%. Agenta was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cognee | Agenta | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 674 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cognee if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Agenta if
- You want the Agenta feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Agenta fits your workflow better
About cognee
Cognee is an open source AI memory platform for agents, released under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Python. It ingests data in any format and builds a self hosted knowledge graph that agents query to recall, connect, and act with full context across sessions. The project lives in the Python ecosystem, installs through standard package managers, and sits in the AI and machine learning infrastructure category alongside graph databases and context engineering tooling. A companion research paper, "Optimizing the Interface Between Knowledge Graphs and LLMs for Complex Reasoning" by Markovic et al., 2025, docu…
read the full cognee overview →
About Agenta
Agenta is an open source workspace where a team builds, runs, and improves AI agents by chatting with them, intended for individuals and teams that want agent automation without moving every task onto metered API billing.
read the full Agenta overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or Agenta more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and Agenta has 4,766. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and Agenta free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Agenta has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cognee and Agenta?
cognee is written in Python and Agenta in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cognee or Agenta?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Agenta if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.