head to head · open source
cognee vs knowhere
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. knowhere has 3,388 stars, 322 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. cognee leads on adoption by 811% (30,848 vs 3,388 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; knowhere is written in Python under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, knowhere 10%. cognee 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 | knowhere | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 knowhere if
- You want the knowhere 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 knowhere 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 knowhere
Knowhere is an Apache 2.0 Python document parsing and retrieval system that turns complex, dirty files into persistent, navigable memory for AI agents and RAG pipelines, built for developers and teams assembling Agentic RAG, vector based RAG, or other LLM workflows over local and offline document collections.
read the full knowhere overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or knowhere more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and knowhere has 3,388. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and knowhere free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and knowhere under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and knowhere?
cognee is written in Python and knowhere 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 knowhere?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose knowhere if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.