Basic Memory vs MemPalace

Basic Memory 82

AGPL-3.0, an OSI licence (30). The terms and privacy policy of 27 October 2026 agree on 30-day retention after cancellation, backups up to 90 days and no training on or sale of content, and name the infrastructure providers (26 of 30). The 1.0 release ships a migration guide mapping every removed tool and command, without a written deprecation period (14 of 20). Telemetry is disclosed in the README with what is and isn't sent and one opt-out, but it is on by default (16 of 20). Total 86.

MemPalace 58

MIT (30). The README, the remote server guide and the setup skill agree that nothing leaves the machine by default; the changelog says ChromaDB telemetry is switched off and the only built-in third-party call, a Wikipedia lookup, was removed (GHSA-mrj5). The embedding model download from Hugging Face on first use is mentioned in the README but its host is not named, deletes remove revisions while the 3.11.0 notes say Chroma's vector index keeps replaced entries, and there is no privacy statement for the hub (22 of 30). Dated upgrade notes name removed modules and SECURITY.md supports only 3.x, with no deprecation policy or notice period (10 of 20). The docs state no telemetry and update checks are opt-in to PyPI only; we searched the downloaded source for outbound hosts but did not audit every call (18 of 20). docs/HISTORY.md publishes the project's own corrections and retractions with dates.

Basic Memory 91

v1.0.0 on 29 October 2026 (30). v0.24.0 and v0.24.1 on 22 October and v1.0.0, three releases in 90 days (20). Recent issues from outside users got maintainer replies within a few days (20 of 25). Verified namespace io.github.basicmachines-co/basic-memory in the official MCP registry, published by a workflow (15). uv.lock and CI, with an open report of an unmaintained dependency (6 of 10). Total 91.

MemPalace 74

v3.11.0 was released on 14 October 2026, 18 days before this check, and no newer tag exists on 1 November although the changelog dates 3.12.0 on 31 October (30). Six releases in the 90 days to 1 November, 3.7.0 on 11 August, 3.7.1, 3.8.0, 3.9.0, 3.10.0 and 3.11.0 (20). Per the 30 October check, 387 open issues and about 478 open pull requests; the seven newest open issues each had one reply, and Igor Lins e Silva has 1,444 commits and code ownership of every path. The clone shows merged fixes on develop on 30 and 31 October (15 of 25). Not in the official MCP registry under a MemPalace namespace; the only match is a third party's io.github.holetron/hindsight-mempalace (0 of 15). Dependabot updates on 23 and 30 October, a version guard workflow, chromadb pinned below 2 and CI passing per the 30 October check (9 of 10).

Basic Memory 85

13 tools, one hidden unless enabled, so the 11 to 30 band (15), with 6 back for the manual tool and the progressive-discovery tags (21 of 25). Search narrows by mode, filters, note types, items, since, path and line context (18 of 20). Refusals are tool errors with typed codes an agent can act on (17 of 20). Every tool has readOnly, destructive and idempotent hints, and edits take an expected checksum that refuses a stale write (19 of 20). Most arguments are optional and the server starts with one command, but there is one language and no SDK beyond the CLI (10 of 15). Total 85.

MemPalace 75

47 tools in the default server (5), with 10 added back for mempalace-light-mcp, which puts the same operations behind 3 tools, and --read-only, which hides the write tools (15 of 25). Search takes limit, wing, room, source file, since, before and a distance cutoff, mempalace_list_drawers pages with limit and offset, batch reads take 1 to 500 IDs, and long mine output is trimmed with output_truncated (18 of 20). Errors are JSON-RPC codes with a hint, refusals name the variable or step that clears them, and a failed mine lists its failed files (17 of 20). readOnlyHint on read tools but no destructiveHint, deletes are irreversible, mempalace_delete_by_source dry-runs by default, mempalace_add_drawer checks for duplicates, drawer IDs are deterministic and a mutating call that failed mid-flight through the proxy is never replayed (13 of 20). Only query is required for search and the default backend needs no configuration; the interfaces are Python and a Rust native CLI, not SDKs for a service (12 of 15).

Basic Memory 50

Self-hosted rule, with the price lines read for the cloud. No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). Cloud plans are public, and credits are $0.01 each, but what a credit buys isn't priced per unit (10). The open-source server is free with no card (20). An agent can install it from PyPI and run it with no account (20). Total 50.

MemPalace 60

Read with the self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free under MIT with no hosted option and nothing to buy, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. LLM reranking and managed backends are optional and billed by their own providers.

Basic Memory 61

Local stdio server with no credential, and cloud OAuth 2.1 through WorkOS with read-only or project-scoped keys on Pro (22 of 30). Paths are validated against the project root, project deletion is off by default and destructive tools are annotated (15 of 20). SECURITY.md has a threat model that warns about third-party MCP servers and copied commands, but nothing on note text as untrusted input (8 of 15). A local log file, and cloud audit logs only on Business (8 of 15). SECURITY.md gives an email and a 72-hour response aim but lists only 0.x.x as supported; no security.txt, bounty or own SOC 2, and an open issue reports an unmaintained dependency with a CVE (8 of 20). Total 61.

MemPalace 53

Local MCP reading. Over stdio nothing needs a credential and the README says nothing leaves the machine unless you opt in. The HTTP hub needs a bearer token off loopback, kept 0600 and passed by environment, but it is one token with full access, no scopes and no per-user keys (15 of 30). A server-wide --read-only mode, dry run by default on bulk delete and a 500-ID cap, but no confirmation step on the delete tools and an advisory showed gaps in read-only mode until 3.7.0 (14 of 20). Search returns verbatim transcripts and mined files, and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the docs, the skills or the code; the query sanitiser deals with prompts pasted into queries, not injected content (2 of 15). A write log at ~/.mempalace/wal/write_log.jsonl records each write and its outcome with content redacted, and /statusz reports request counters and recent clients (11 of 15). SECURITY.md with private reporting and a 48-hour acknowledgement target, one published advisory with credit, Dependabot, and Chroma server CVEs documented. No security.txt, bug bounty, CodeQL workflow or audit (11 of 20).

Basic Memory 83

Local-software lines, as a stdio MCP server the owner runs. basic-memory on PyPI with Python 3.12 or newer stated, installed with uv (20). Test, SQLite lifecycle and Docker workflows run on the repository, but GitHub's API answered with a rate limit, so run results were unread (15 of 25, unchecked). 74 open issues and pull requests against 200 commits in the 90 days, with recent bug reports answered by a maintainer within days and one flaky-CI issue open (18 of 25). The changelog calls out breaking changes in their own sections (15). v1.0.0 on 29 October 2026 (15). Total 83.

MemPalace 77

Read with the local-software lines, as software the owner runs. PyPI package mempalace and a multi-arch ghcr.io image, with Python 3.10 or later and Linux, macOS and Windows stated (20). The Tests workflow runs pytest on Linux with Python 3.10, 3.11 and 3.13 and on Windows and macOS, and its push runs on develop on 20 and 25 October 2026 passed (25). 387 open issues against 1,311 workflow runs on develop and 30 listed contributors; the seven newest open issues each had a reply, and we did not sort the backlog for crash reports, so the early macOS ARM64 segfault (#74) and later ones were not counted (12 of 25). Keep a Changelog with upgrade notes on each release, but minor versions remove modules and Python versions, as the 3.12.0 notes (dated 31 October, not yet tagged on 1 November) drop mempalace.dedup, onboarding and Python 3.9 (10 of 15). Version 3.11.0, while pyproject.toml still classifies the package as Development Status 4 - Beta (10 of 15).