head to head · open source
cognee vs lancedb
cognee has 33,063 GitHub stars, 3,459 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lancedb has 11,843 stars, 1,150 forks, 627 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee leads on adoption by 179% (33,063 vs 11,843 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; lancedb is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, lancedb 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 | lancedb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 lancedb if
- You want the lancedb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and lancedb 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 lancedb
The Multimodal AI Lakehouse How to Install ✦ Detailed Documentation ✦ Tutorials and Recipes ✦ Contributors The ultimate multimodal data platform for AI/ML applications. LanceDB is designed for fast, scalable, and production ready vector search. It is built on top of the Lance columnar format. You can store, index, and search over petabytes of multimodal data and vectors with ease. LanceDB is a central location where developers can build, train and analyze their AI workloads. Demo: Multimodal Search by Keyword, Vector or with SQL Star LanceDB to get updates! ⭐ Click here ⭐ to see how fast we're growing! Key…
read the full lancedb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or lancedb more popular?
cognee has 33,063 GitHub stars and lancedb has 11,843. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and lancedb free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and lancedb under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and lancedb?
cognee is written in Python and lancedb 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 lancedb?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (33,063 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lancedb if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.