head to head · open source
PageIndex vs cognee
PageIndex has 39,958 GitHub stars, 3,438 forks, 103 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee has 33,012 stars, 3,448 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PageIndex leads on adoption by 21% (39,958 vs 33,012 stars). PageIndex is written in Python under MIT; cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0. PageIndex has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cognee 10%. cognee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai, ai-agents, context-engineering), 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
| PageIndex | cognee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 33K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PageIndex if
- You weight community size — 40K 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 PageIndex
PageIndex: Vectorless, Reasoning based RAG Reasoning based RAG ◦ No Vector DB, No Chunking ◦ Context Aware Retrieval ◦ Reads Like a Human 🌐 Website • ☁️ Cloud • 📖 Docs • 📝 Blog • ✉️ Contact Updates [Aug '26] 🔥 PageIndex SDK : pip install U pageindex now ships local mode : index, retrieve, and chat entirely on your machine with your own LLM key, or point the same client at PageIndex Cloud with an API key. [Aug '26] ⚡ PageIndex Flash : fast tree index generation for text based PDFs, now the default indexing method in PageIndex SDK local mode. Scale PageIndex to Millions of Documents: PageIndex File System is a…
read the full PageIndex overview →
About cognee
Cognee The Open Source AI Memory Platform for Agents Demo . Docs . Learn More · Join Discord · Join r/AIMemory . Community Plugins & Add ons Cognee is the open source AI memory platform that gives AI agents persistent long term memory across sessions. Ingest data in any format, build a self hosted knowledge graph, and let every agent recall, connect, and act with full context 🌐 This README is also available in: Deutsch Español Français 日本語 한국어 Português Русский 中文 📄 Read the research paper: Optimizing the Interface Between Knowledge Graphs and LLMs for Complex Reasoning — Markovic et al., 2025 When to use…
read the full cognee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PageIndex or cognee more popular?
PageIndex has 39,958 GitHub stars and cognee has 33,012. PageIndex has the larger community by that measure.
Are PageIndex and cognee free?
Both are open source. PageIndex is licensed under MIT and cognee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PageIndex and cognee?
PageIndex 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, PageIndex or cognee?
Choose PageIndex if you want the larger community (39,958 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cognee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.