head to head · open source
Mem0 vs cognee
Mem0 has 65,539 GitHub stars, 7,687 forks, 742 open issues and last shipped today. cognee has 30,794 stars, 3,054 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped today. Mem0 leads on adoption by 113% (65,539 vs 30,794 stars). Mem0 is written in Python under Apache-2.0; cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Mem0 has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, cognee 10%. Mem0 was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, ai-agents), 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
| Mem0 | cognee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 31K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.7K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Mem0 if
- You weight community size — 66K 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 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 Mem0
Mem0 is an open source memory layer for AI agents and applications, designed to store, retrieve, and manage persistent context across interactions. It lives in the Python based AI development ecosystem and provides infrastructure that enables agents and apps to remember user preferences, conversation history, and state over time—moving beyond ephemeral chat sessions toward truly adaptive systems.
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 Mem0 or cognee more popular?
Mem0 has 65,539 GitHub stars and cognee has 30,794. Mem0 has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mem0 and cognee free?
Both are open source. Mem0 is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cognee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mem0 and cognee?
Mem0 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, Mem0 or cognee?
Choose Mem0 if you want the larger community (65,539 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cognee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.