head to head · open source
cognee vs next-plaid
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. next-plaid has 546 stars, 60 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 26 days ago. cognee leads on adoption by 5,550% (30,848 vs 546 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; next-plaid is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, next-plaid 11%. 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 | next-plaid | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 546 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-08-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 60 |
| 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 next-plaid if
- You want the next-plaid 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 next-plaid 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 next-plaid
NextPlaid is a multi vector search engine written in Rust, and ColGREP is the semantic code search tool built on top of it for developers who work in the terminal and for the coding agents that run beside them.
read the full next-plaid overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or next-plaid more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and next-plaid has 546. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and next-plaid free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and next-plaid under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and next-plaid?
cognee is written in Python and next-plaid 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 next-plaid?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose next-plaid if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.