head to head · open source
cognee vs VectorDBBench
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. VectorDBBench has 1,178 stars, 439 forks, 184 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. cognee leads on adoption by 2,519% (30,848 vs 1,178 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; VectorDBBench is written in Python under MIT. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, VectorDBBench 37%. 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 | VectorDBBench | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 439 |
| 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 VectorDBBench if
- You want the VectorDBBench feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and VectorDBBench 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 VectorDBBench
VectorDBBench (VDBBench) is an MIT licensed Python benchmark tool for measuring the performance and cost effectiveness of vector databases and cloud vector services, built for anyone — including non professionals — who needs to reproduce existing benchmark results or test a new system before choosing it.
read the full VectorDBBench overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or VectorDBBench more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and VectorDBBench has 1,178. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and VectorDBBench free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and VectorDBBench under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and VectorDBBench?
cognee is written in Python and VectorDBBench 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 VectorDBBench?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose VectorDBBench if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.