head to head · open source
cognee vs neo4j
cognee has 30,794 GitHub stars, 3,054 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped today. neo4j has 17,241 stars, 2,703 forks, 252 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. cognee leads on adoption by 79% (30,794 vs 17,241 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; neo4j is written in Java under GPL-3.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, neo4j 16%. cognee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (graph-database), 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 | neo4j | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 neo4j if
- You want the neo4j feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and neo4j 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 neo4j
Neo4j is a Java graph database released under GPL 3.0 that stores data as nodes and relationships and queries it with Cypher, aimed at developers, data engineers, and platform teams building connected data applications who would otherwise model those relationships as tables and joins.
read the full neo4j overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or neo4j more popular?
cognee has 30,794 GitHub stars and neo4j has 17,241. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and neo4j free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and neo4j under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and neo4j?
cognee is written in Python and neo4j in Java. 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 neo4j?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,794 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose neo4j if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.