# Basic Memory vs past.dev (slim)

> Basic Memory scores 76.9 (BB) to past.dev's 69.8 (B) for agent memory. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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Basic Memory scores 76.9 (BB) on agent readiness against past.dev's 69.8 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent memory.

- Basic Memory: BB 76.9, rank #38 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/basic-memory.min.md
- past.dev: B 69.8, rank #223 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/past-dev.min.md
- Basic Memory, good for Memory for coding agents and assistants kept as Markdown the user owns, with search and a graph. Ahead on Reliability, 83 against 68; Payments & pricing, 50 against 40; Maintenance & community, 91 against 77; Transparency & trust, 82 against 66. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; No key needed to call it; Runs on your own machine; Open source.
- past.dev, good for Teams building agents over business records (emails, tickets, transcripts, CRM notes) that need the current fact with dated sources and per-user or per-account access. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Basic Memory | past.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 83 | 68 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 86 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 85 | 83 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 61 | 64 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 91 | 77 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 82 | 66 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Basic Memory | past.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Basic Memory LLC | Revo Inc. (doing business as Past Corp.) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.past.dev` |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary hosted service under past.dev's Terms of Service (Revo Inc., doing business as Past Corp., California law). The benchmark harness and the Claude Code and Codex plugins are MIT-licensed on GitHub under pastdotdev |
| Tools exposed | 13 | 56 |
| MCP registry | `io.github.basicmachines-co/basic-memory` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-19 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-30 |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 4.5k stars, 20k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Transparency & trust, Basic Memory +16: 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.); past.dev 66 (Closed service under clear, dated terms (27 October 2026) naming Revo Inc., a Delaware corporation doing business as Past Corp. (15). The privacy policy (27 October 2026) says content isn't used for training, deletion removes derived facts, a deleted organisation's backups expire within 7 days, the request log follows the plan's retention and a project and everything derived from it are deleted on request. The security page says model providers process requests with zero retention. The pricing page gives data retention of 365 days on Pay as you go and 3 years on Flex, while the privacy policy says memory is kept while the organisation exists, so the two don't fully agree (20 of 30). The terms promise email before a change removes a capability an account uses, and the changelog says breaking changes are announced before release. Breaking changes shipped in the weeks of 21 September and 19 October, and there is no versioning or dated deprecation policy (8 of 20). AWS is named as host. The privacy policy now puts the sub-processor list and hosting regions in the trust centre at security.revo.ai, which is drawn by script and wasn't readable on 19 October, and the security page gives them on request (5 of 20). 15 + 20 + 8 + 5 = 48.)
- Reliability, Basic Memory +15: 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.); past.dev 68 (Graded on the hosted Memory API with the hosted lines. past.dev/status lists six components (Memory API, ingestion, recall, console, MCP servers, documentation), each with a 90-day uptime figure (100 per cent on 2 November), and a readable incident history. On 19 October the uptime figures read "no data" and the history did not load (20; was 10). The history page says records begin on 9 September 2026 and no incident has been reported, so the record covers 54 of the 90 days from 4 August. A readable record shorter than 90 days on a page that has never posted scores 15, as this run settled for short records (15; was 5). Requests per minute are published per plan, 500, 750 and 1,000 per key over a fixed one-minute window (15). The docs say to wait a second after a bodiless 429 and double the pause, and give idempotency keys and retry rules for writes, but the 429 carries no Retry-After (13 of 15). The terms of 27 October 2026 say there is no service level commitment outside Enterprise, and none is published for Enterprise (0). The new terms no longer describe the service as in early access and no page we read labels it beta, but the changelog still says the API is unversioned and its paths may change, read as a young API that may change, 5 as for excaliclaw (5; was 0). 20 + 15 + 15 + 13 + 0 + 5 = 68.)
- Maintenance & community, Basic Memory +14: 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.); past.dev 77 (Read for a closed service. The changelog's newest entry is the week of 19 October 2026, with framework connectors, MCP deletion tools and a breaking refusal of `/` in data point ids (30). Seven dated weekly entries in the 90 days from 4 August (weeks of 24 August, 14, 21 and 28 September, and 5, 12 and 19 October), and the integrations post of 28 October (20). A public changelog, a community Slack and email support on Flex, none of which we tested (10 of 15). The MCP server is in the official MCP registry as `dev.past/past` under the past.dev domain namespace, published 30 September 2026, and official framework packages now exist on npm and PyPI, but there is no general-purpose SDK (12 of 15; was 5). The Claude Code and Codex plugin repositories are MIT with a `check.yml` workflow, with CI results unchecked, per the 19 October check (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 12 + 5 = 77.)
- Payments & pricing, Basic Memory +10: 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.); past.dev 40 (No x402, MPP or L402. A spent balance returns `402 out-of-credits` with no payment payload (0 of 40). Credit prices are public without a login, one credit per 350 bytes and packs from $0.30 to $0.13 per 1,000 credits, re-read on 2 November (20). Pay as you go starts with 150,000 credits, 400,000 with a work email, and the pricing page says no card is required (20). A person signs up in a browser. The `agent_auth` flow lets an agent get a token for a person who already has an account and approves it in a browser, which still needs a human signup (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.)