head to head · open source
cognee vs Olares
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Olares has 5,278 stars, 329 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee leads on adoption by 484% (30,848 vs 5,278 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Olares is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Olares 6%. Olares was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| cognee | Olares | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 329 |
| 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 Olares if
- You want the Olares feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Olares 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 Olares
Olares is an open source personal cloud operating system built to run AI agents and large language models on hardware you own. It is written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license, and it sits in the cloud native and self hosted corner of the machine learning infrastructure ecosystem. The project describes itself as an operating system you operate in plain language, powered by Kubernetes, turning a machine or a set of machines into a self hosted AI platform reachable from any browser.
read the full Olares overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or Olares more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and Olares has 5,278. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and Olares free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Olares under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and Olares?
cognee is written in Python and Olares in Go. 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 Olares?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Olares if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.