head to head · open source
cognee vs Arize Phoenix
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Arize Phoenix has 11,544 stars, 1,140 forks, 970 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee leads on adoption by 167% (30,848 vs 11,544 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Arize Phoenix is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Arize Phoenix 10%. cognee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| cognee | Arize Phoenix | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 Arize Phoenix if
- You want the Arize Phoenix feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Arize Phoenix 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 Arize Phoenix
Arize Phoenix is an open source AI observability platform for experimentation, evaluation, and troubleshooting. It lives in the machine learning infrastructure ecosystem and is written in Python. The project provides tracing, evaluation, datasets, experiments, prompt management, and a playground for LLM applications.
read the full Arize Phoenix overview →
More in AI & Machine Learning
Related comparisons
More Machine Learning Infrastructure projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Machine Learning Infrastructure field.
Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or Arize Phoenix more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and Arize Phoenix has 11,544. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and Arize Phoenix free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Arize Phoenix has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cognee and Arize Phoenix?
cognee is written in Python and Arize Phoenix in Python. 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 Arize Phoenix?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Arize Phoenix if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.