Head to head · Memory search · October 2026 research run
AI Memory vs Cognee
AI Memory scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cognee's 54.6 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cognee leads on schema & documentation, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do memory search.
Best memory layers for AI agents · All 103 memory comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for AI Memory keeps shared project memory and task handoffs across coding agents.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 65 against 59
- Security & auth, 55 against 39
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
Also in its favour
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 3.0 out of 5
- No incidents deducted, where Cognee loses 3 points for them
Watch for
Existing deployments may still lack authentication
Cognee C
Best for Agents whose memory has to include documents, wikis and chat tools as well as conversation, and for teams happy to self-host.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 65
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 50
- Transparency & trust, 66 against 35
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
- Open source
Watch for
No status page, rate limits, SLA or SOC 2 for Cloud, and Cloud runs in AWS us-east-1 with no EU region
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | AI Memory | Cognee | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 50 | 50 | even |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 65 | 85 | Cognee +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 59 | AI Memory +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 55 | 39 | AI Memory +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 35 | AI Memory +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 50 | 82 | Cognee +32 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 35 | 66 | Cognee +31 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | C 55.7/100 | C 54.6/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | AI Memory | Cognee |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | MCP server | Platform |
| Vendor | Fabio Akita | Cognee |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://<tenant>.aws.cognee.ai/api/v1 |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 7 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-17 | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-03-27 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 11k stars | 31k stars, 21k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (4) | 3/5 (2) |
Verdicts
AI Memory
Cross-agent task handoffs and shared search. Existing deployments may still lack authentication.
Cognee
Apache-2.0 library, REST server and MCP server, all self-hostable, with local models and no LLM key since 1.6.0. No status page, rate limits, SLA or SOC 2 for Cloud, and Cloud runs in AWS us-east-1 with no EU region.
Before you call either
AI Memory
- Check authentication explicitly before exposing the server beyond loopback.
- Exclude secrets and sensitive repositories from memory capture.
- Back up memory and follow the version 3 migration guide.
Cognee
- Use remember, recall and forget. The older cognify, search and delete MCP tools are gone
- Always include /api/v1 in REST paths
- Check cognify_status before querying data you added with background=true
- Never pass everything=true to forget unless you mean to wipe all of the user's memory
- Set a client timeout on Cloud calls and treat HTTP 402 as an empty balance, since an empty balance has also shown up as hangs
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, AI Memory or Cognee?
AI Memory scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cognee's 54.6 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cognee leads on schema & documentation, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.
Can an agent call AI Memory and Cognee without installing anything?
AI Memory runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Cognee has a hosted endpoint at https://<tenant>.aws.cognee.ai/api/v1.
Are AI Memory and Cognee open source?
No open-source release is listed for AI Memory. Cognee is open source (Apache-2.0).
Other comparisons with AI Memory or Cognee
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs Cognee
- Cognee vs Graphicle
- Cognee vs Graphiti
- Cognee vs Hindsight
- Cognee vs Honcho
- Cognee vs Hy Memory
- Cognee vs LangMem
- Cognee vs LocalGhost
- Cognee vs Mem0 Platform + MCP
- Cognee vs Memory (MCP reference server)
- Cognee vs Supermemory API + MCP
- Cognee vs Zep
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs AI Memory
- AI Memory vs Context Mode Engine
- AI Memory vs Graphicle
- AI Memory vs Graphiti
- AI Memory vs Hindsight
- AI Memory vs Honcho
- AI Memory vs Hy Memory
- AI Memory vs Khoj
- AI Memory vs LangMem
- AI Memory vs Mem0 Platform + MCP
- AI Memory vs Supermemory API + MCP
- AI Memory vs Zep
- Cognee vs Context Mode Engine
- AI Memory vs Egoist AI Passport
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/ai-memory-vs-cognee.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/ai-memory.json·/api/v1/tools/cognee.json - From a terminal
anchor compare ai-memory cognee(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "ai-memory", "b": "cognee"}at/mcp, no key