head to head · open source
cognee vs llmwiki
cognee has 30,794 GitHub stars, 3,054 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped today. llmwiki has 1,625 stars, 234 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. cognee leads on adoption by 1,795% (30,794 vs 1,625 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; llmwiki is written in Python under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, llmwiki 14%. 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 | llmwiki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 234 |
| 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 llmwiki if
- You want the llmwiki 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 llmwiki 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 llmwiki
LLM Wiki is an open source, Apache 2.0 Python project that turns a folder of documents, notes, and web clippings into an autonomous, self maintaining personal Wikipedia written and updated by Claude over MCP, built for individual readers, their AI assistants, and organizations that want a knowledge base they do not have to remember to update.
read the full llmwiki overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or llmwiki more popular?
cognee has 30,794 GitHub stars and llmwiki has 1,625. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and llmwiki free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and llmwiki under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and llmwiki?
cognee is written in Python and llmwiki 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 llmwiki?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,794 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose llmwiki if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.