Head to head · Memory search · October 2026 research run
AI Memory vs Zep
Zep scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against AI Memory's 55.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. AI Memory leads on payments & pricing. 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
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
Existing deployments may still lack authentication
Zep BB
Best for Agents that must track how facts about a person or account change over time, inside a team that needs access policies and audit logs.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 70 against 50
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 65
- Agent ergonomics, 87 against 65
- Security & auth, 84 against 55
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 50
- Transparency & trust, 59 against 35
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 4.0 against 3.5 out of 5
Watch for
The terms of 17 August 2026 grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to train models on customer data
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | AI Memory | Zep | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 50 | 70 | Zep +20 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 65 | 93 | Zep +28 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 87 | Zep +22 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 55 | 84 | Zep +29 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 30 | AI Memory +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 50 | 80 | Zep +30 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 35 | 59 | Zep +24 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 55.7/100 | BB 73.9/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | AI Memory | Zep |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Fabio Akita | Zep |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.getzep.com/api/v4 |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 (examples repo). The service is closed-source |
| Tools exposed | none | 12 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-17 | 2026-10-14 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2024-01-27 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| 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 | yes |
| Popularity | 11k stars | 4.9k stars, 130k npm/wk, 87k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (4) | 4/5 (2) |
Verdicts
AI Memory
Cross-agent task handoffs and shared search. Existing deployments may still lack authentication.
Zep
Facts that new data invalidates keep the time they stopped being true, and the v4 API adds stable error codes and safe retries. The terms of 17 August 2026 grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to train models on customer data.
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.
Zep
- Use the 4.0 SDKs and store the UUID each create call returns. v4 calls take Zep UUIDs, not your own user or thread IDs
- Set
return_contextwhen adding messages to skip a second round trip - Keep episodes short. Every 350 bytes past the first costs another credit
- Branch on
error.code. On a 429, wait for Retry-After with jitter. Free accounts over quota drop to 5 requests a minute - Send an
Idempotency-Keyon any create call your code may repeat, and expect a delay after an add (202 Accepted) before new facts show up in search
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, AI Memory or Zep?
Zep scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against AI Memory's 55.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. AI Memory leads on payments & pricing.
Do AI Memory and Zep need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call AI Memory and Zep without installing anything?
AI Memory runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Zep has a hosted endpoint at https://api.getzep.com/api/v4.
Other comparisons with AI Memory or Zep
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs Zep
- Cognee vs Zep
- Graphiti vs Zep
- Hindsight vs Zep
- Honcho vs Zep
- Hy Memory vs Zep
- LangMem vs Zep
- LocalGhost vs Zep
- Mem0 Platform + MCP vs Zep
- Memory (MCP reference server) vs Zep
- Supermemory API + MCP vs Zep
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs AI Memory
- AI Memory vs Cognee
- 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
- Context Mode Engine vs Zep
- Graphicle vs Zep
- AI Memory vs Egoist AI Passport
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/ai-memory-vs-zep.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/ai-memory.json·/api/v1/tools/zep.json - From a terminal
anchor compare ai-memory zep(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "ai-memory", "b": "zep"}at/mcp, no key