head to head · open source
cognee vs server
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars, 3,066 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. server has 8,250 stars, 2,105 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee leads on adoption by 274% (30,848 vs 8,250 stars). cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0; server is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. cognee has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, server 26%. server 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
| cognee | server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| 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 server if
- You want the server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and server 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 server
MariaDB Server is a community developed, GPL 2.0 relational database server forked from MySQL by the original MySQL developers, aimed at teams that want MySQL compatibility with a sanely licensed, independently governed SQL server.
read the full server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cognee or server more popular?
cognee has 30,848 GitHub stars and server has 8,250. cognee has the larger community by that measure.
Are cognee and server free?
Both are open source. cognee is licensed under Apache-2.0 and server under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cognee and server?
cognee is written in Python and server 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 server?
Choose cognee if you want the larger community (30,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose server if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.