head to head · open source
cognee vs autoflow
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. autoflow has 2,974 stars, 193 forks, 74 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. cognee leads on adoption by 937% (30,848 vs 2,974 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; autoflow is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, autoflow 6%. 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.
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Side by side
| cognee | autoflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-04-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 193 |
| 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 autoflow if
- You want the autoflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and autoflow 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 autoflow
AutoFlow is an open source Graph RAG conversational knowledge base tool from PingCAP, built on TiDB Vector, LlamaIndex and DSPy, aimed at teams that want to turn their own documentation sites into a searchable, answer generating chatbot.
read the full autoflow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or autoflow more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and autoflow has 2,974. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and autoflow free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and autoflow under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and autoflow?
cognee is written in Python and autoflow 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 autoflow?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose autoflow if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.