head to head · open source
cognee vs zvec
cognee has 30,780 GitHub stars, 3,050 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zvec has 15,962 stars, 996 forks, 56 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee leads on adoption by 93% (30,780 vs 15,962 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; zvec is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, zvec 6%. cognee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (agent-skills), 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 | zvec | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 996 |
| 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 zvec if
- You want the zvec feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and zvec 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 zvec
Zvec is an open source, in process vector database written in C++ and licensed under Apache 2.0, built to embed directly into applications so that vector search, full text search, and hybrid retrieval run inside the developer's own process instead of behind a separate service.
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or zvec more popular?
cognee has 30,780 GitHub stars and zvec has 15,962. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and zvec free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and zvec under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and zvec?
cognee is written in Python and zvec in C++. 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 zvec?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,780 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose zvec if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.