head to head · open source
cognee vs kividb
cognee has 32,706 GitHub stars, 3,410 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kividb has 543 stars, 15 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee leads on adoption by 5,923% (32,706 vs 543 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; kividb is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, kividb 3%. kividb 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 | kividb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 543 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 15 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cognee if
- You weight community size — 33K 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 kividb if
- You want the kividb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kividb fits your workflow better
About cognee
Cognee The Open Source AI Memory Platform for Agents Demo . Docs . Learn More · Join Discord · Join r/AIMemory . Community Plugins & Add ons Cognee is the open source AI memory platform that gives AI agents persistent long term memory across sessions. Ingest data in any format, build a self hosted knowledge graph, and let every agent recall, connect, and act with full context 🌐 This README is also available in: Deutsch Español Français 日本語 한국어 Português Русский 中文 📄 Read the research paper: Optimizing the Interface Between Knowledge Graphs and LLMs for Complex Reasoning — Markovic et al., 2025 When to use…
read the full cognee overview →
About kividb
KiviDB KiviDB is a fast, multi threaded alternative to Redis® and Valkey, written in Rust. It speaks the Redis protocol (RESP2 and RESP3), so existing Redis clients, redis cli and libraries work unchanged, and it has full text and vector search built in. It runs every core on a sharded in memory key value design, and persists to snapshots and an optional append only file. On the same 32 cores, KiviDB serves 21 million pipelined GETs per second: about 9× Redis 8 and 2.3× Dragonfly , with under half Dragonfly's p99 latency (benchmarks). KiviDB listens on 6380 , not Redis's 6379, so the two can run side by side…
read the full kividb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or kividb more popular?
cognee has 32,706 GitHub stars and kividb has 543. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and kividb free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kividb under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and kividb?
cognee is written in Python and kividb in Rust. 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 kividb?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (32,706 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kividb if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.