head to head · open source
cognee vs deep-searcher
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deep-searcher has 8,273 stars, 804 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. cognee leads on adoption by 273% (30,848 vs 8,273 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; deep-searcher is written in Python under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, deep-searcher 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.
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Side by side
| cognee | deep-searcher | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2025-11-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 804 |
| 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 deep-searcher if
- You want the deep-searcher feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and deep-searcher 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 deep-searcher
DeepSearcher is an open source deep research tool that combines large language models with vector databases to search, evaluate, and reason over private data, producing accurate answers and comprehensive reports. Written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 license, it lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem as a machine learning infrastructure project, built around agentic retrieval augmented generation and the Zilliz/Milvus vector search stack. The project has been on GitHub for two years, carries 8265 stars and 803 forks, and had its most recent push on 19 November 2025.
read the full deep-searcher overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or deep-searcher more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and deep-searcher has 8,273. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and deep-searcher free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and deep-searcher under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and deep-searcher?
cognee is written in Python and deep-searcher 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 deep-searcher?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose deep-searcher if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.