head to head · open source
serviette vs cognee
serviette has 58,799 GitHub stars, 1,510 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cognee has 32,373 stars, 3,378 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serviette leads on adoption by 82% (58,799 vs 32,373 stars). serviette is written in Python under MIT; cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0. serviette has attracted 3% 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.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| serviette | cognee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 59K | ★ 32K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick serviette if
- You weight community size — 59K 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 serviette
serviette is a no code, always up to date RAG server that turns a folder of documents into a chat interface and a REST API with cited answers, built for teams that want question answering over their own organisation's files without assembling or maintaining a retrieval pipeline.
read the full serviette 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 →
More in AI & Machine Learning
Related comparisons
More Machine Learning Infrastructure projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Machine Learning Infrastructure field.
Frequently asked questions
Is serviette or cognee more popular?
serviette has 58,799 GitHub stars and cognee has 32,373. serviette has the larger community by that measure.
Are serviette and cognee free?
Both are open source. serviette is licensed under MIT and cognee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serviette and cognee?
serviette 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, serviette or cognee?
Choose serviette if you want the larger community (58,799 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cognee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.