head to head · open source
llama_index vs cognee
llama_index has 52,202 GitHub stars, 8,162 forks, 770 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee has 30,780 stars, 3,050 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama_index leads on adoption by 70% (52,202 vs 30,780 stars). llama_index is written in Python under MIT; cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0. llama_index has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, cognee 10%. llama_index 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
| llama_index | cognee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 31K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.2K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick llama_index if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cognee if
- You want the cognee 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 cognee fits your workflow better
About llama_index
LlamaIndex is an MIT licensed, open source Python framework for building agentic applications — retrieval augmented generation systems, agents and multi agent workflows — on top of private documents and data, and it is aimed at AI engineers and teams who need to connect large language models to their own sources of context.
read the full llama_index overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is llama_index or cognee more popular?
llama_index has 52,202 GitHub stars and cognee has 30,780. llama_index has the larger community by that measure.
Are llama_index and cognee free?
Both are open source. llama_index is licensed under MIT and cognee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between llama_index and cognee?
llama_index is written in Python and cognee 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, llama_index or cognee?
Choose llama_index if you want the larger community (52,202 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cognee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.