Head to head · Agent memory · October 2026 research run

Cognee vs EverOS

EverOS scores 69.4 (B) on agent readiness against Cognee's 47.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent memory.

Best memory layers for AI agents · All 353 memory comparisons

Which one, for what

Cognee D

Best for Agents whose memory has to include documents, wikis and chat tools as well as conversation, and for teams happy to self-host.

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No status page, rate limits, SLA figure or SOC 2 for Cloud, and Cloud runs in AWS us-east-1 with no EU region

EverOS B

Best for Self-hosted memory for agents and apps that want Markdown as the source of truth and separate user and agent tracks.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 79 against 43
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 59
  • Security & auth, 47 against 39
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 35

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • No incidents deducted, where Cognee loses 9 points for them

Watch for

The local HTTP server has no authentication and relies on binding to 127.0.0.1

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reliability EverOS +36

Cognee 43

We departed from the checklist here. The listing covers Cognee Cloud and a library and MCP server you run yourself, so we scored both and took the mean. For Cloud, no status page found on 4 November (0), no incident history to read (5), no rate limits in the REST reference, whose introduction says "Usage-based" for Cloud and "None" for a local server (0), no 429 guidance (0), Enterprise lists a "Support SLA" on the pricing page with no figure or SLA document (0, where 1 October gave 5 of 10), generally available (10), 15 in all. For the local package, cognee on PyPI with Python 3.10 to 3.14 stated in SECURITY.md and pyproject.toml (20). 64 GitHub Actions workflows, and test_suites.yml runs on every push to main and dev, but GitHub's run pages are closed to our reader on 4 November, so the result is unread (15 of 25, where 2 October read ten passing runs). Open regressions not counted, per the 2 October check (10 of 25). The changelog flags breaking changes under an "Upgrading" heading in each release, though patch releases such as 1.6.3, 1.6.5 and 1.6.6 carry them and 11 MCP tools went in May without a version bump (10 of 15). Version 1.6.6 (15). 70 in all. Mean 42.5, rounded half up to 43.

EverOS 79

Local-software lines, as a library and server the owner runs. everos on PyPI with Python 3.12 or newer stated, plus a Windows guide (20). ci.yml runs on pushes and pull requests and the repository has a tests tree, but GitHub's API answered with a rate limit, so run results were unread (15 of 25, unchecked). 43 open issues and pull requests against 82 commits in 90 days; several outside bug reports, including a silent capture failure in the DSH plugin, have no reply (14 of 25). Keep a Changelog with semantic versioning declared and a 1.0 migration guide (15). Version 1.5.1 (15). Total 79.

Agent ergonomics EverOS +19

Cognee 59

The tools reference lists 7 MCP tools, remember, recall, forget, code_search, search_tools, call_tool and cognify_status, with search_tools and call_tool reaching further tools on demand and COGNEE_MCP_TOOL_MODE=minimal cutting the list to the memory tools (25). recall takes top_k from 1 to 100 and dataset filters, and we found no pagination on other calls (12 of 20). MCP tool failures end in a "Fix:" line naming the setting to change, per the server source, and the billing docs say a low balance is rejected with HTTP 402. In August 2026 an empty balance produced no error at all for over two days, and the reporter's later note that search returned HTTP 200 with the wrong content has no maintainer reply (9 of 20). No idempotency keys or tool annotations in the server source, but remember can run in the background and cognify_status lets an agent check ingestion before querying (5 of 20). Python only, and the MCP server starts with one docker run (8 of 15). On 4 November the tools reference and cognee-mcp 0.5.7 source still register the same seven tools, with no tool annotations.

EverOS 78

Read for the API, with seven MCP tools on top. Searches take top_k and a method, and responses can be scoped by five ids (20 of 25). Filters nest with AND and OR, and /get pages results (18 of 20). Errors carry typed codes and say which are retryable (16 of 20). add is queued and returns 202, a busy session refuses deletion with nothing deleted, and the cloud purge needs a nonce confirmed within five minutes (12 of 20). A demo runs with no key and the minimal setup needs one OpenRouter key, with a Python library and the MCP server, one language (12 of 15). Total 78.

Security & auth EverOS +8

Cognee 39

Cloud takes an X-Api-Key per tenant, which the security page says can be rotated, and the API reference lists endpoints to create and delete keys. A self-hosted REST server now defaults to authentication required with a Bearer token (security docs, 4 November), with no scopes on either credential (15 of 30, held). Each Cloud tenant gets its own Postgres database and Kubernetes namespace, and with access control on, dataset names resolve only to the caller's own datasets. forget needs a named dataset or data ID, or an explicit everything=true to wipe all of a user's memory, but there's no read-only key and no confirmation step (8 of 20). Cognee ingests documents and synced Slack, Notion, Linear and Google Drive content and returns it to the model, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0). Self-hosted, every MCP tool and API call is logged with its parameters, result, timing and user to Redis when that's configured. We found no audit log for Cloud (6 of 15). SECURITY.md asks for reports to security@cognee.ai, and an OpenSSF Scorecard workflow runs in CI. The security page, updated 22 July 2026, says Cognee holds no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or equivalent audit, and there's no security.txt (10 of 20). On 4 November SECURITY.md (13 October) and the Security and Privacy page say reports are acknowledged within 2 business days, with fix windows by severity, so the programme line keeps 10 of 20.

EverOS 47

Framework reading for software the owner runs. The local server has no authentication and no security scheme in the OpenAPI document, relying on a 127.0.0.1 bind by default (15 of 30). No read-only mode; the cloud purge is two-step (8 of 20). Memories are extracted from conversations and returned into prompts, and everos-mcp tells hosts to save facts unprompted, with no injection guidance found (4 of 15). Structured logs and lock metrics, no audit log (6 of 15). SECURITY.md with a reporting address, five-day acknowledgement, supported versions and a published-advisories section, plus a valid security.txt (14 of 20). Total 47.

Payments & pricing EverOS +5

Cognee 35

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Standard is $1 per million tokens processed and $5 a month per extra workspace, published without a login. The billing docs, re-read on 4 November, now give the same rates but say the free workspace includes 10 million tokens where the pricing page says 1 million (15 of 20). Free includes a workspace, "no card required" (20). A person signs up for a Cloud tenant in the browser (0). Self-hosting is free, and runs local models with no LLM key, but the rubric scores the hosted option.

EverOS 40

Self-hosted rule, with the price lines read for EverOS Cloud. No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). No cloud price or plan found on evermind.ai, its FAQ, terms or docs (0). The open-source runtime is free with no card (20). An agent can install it from PyPI and run it with no account (20). Total 40.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCogneeEverOSEdge
Reliability16%204379EverOS +36
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28589EverOS +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.25978EverOS +19
Security & auth14%17.53947EverOS +8
Payments & pricing10%12.53540EverOS +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88280Cognee +2
Transparency & trust7%8.87271Cognee +1
Negative events≤15-90
TotalD 47.7/100B 69.4/100

Facts side by side

FactCogneeEverOS
KindPlatformHTTP API
VendorCogneeEvermind AI, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://<tenant>.aws.cognee.ai/api/v1no (local only)
TransportsHTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy)HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Tools exposed77
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-292026-10-22
Terms last updated2026-03-272026-01-20
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-01-20
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity31k stars14k stars, 4k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Cognee

Apache-2.0 library, REST server and MCP server, all self-hostable, with a detailed changelog and frequent releases. Cloud has no status page, rate limits or SOC 2, and runs in AWS us-east-1. Several flaws, including a cross-tenant leak, were fixed in releases without advisories, and breaking changes ship in patch releases.

EverOS

EverOS keeps agent and user memory as Markdown with SQLite and LanceDB indexes, behind a described OpenAPI with typed, retryable errors and an MCP server, under Apache-2.0 at version 1.5.1. The local server has no authentication, EverOS Cloud prices are not published, and the cloud terms forbid automated data extraction.

Before you call either

Cognee

  1. Use remember, recall and forget. The older cognify, search and delete MCP tools are gone
  2. Always include /api/v1 in REST paths
  3. Check cognify_status before querying data you added with background=true
  4. Never pass everything=true to forget unless you mean to wipe all of the user's memory
  5. Treat HTTP 402 as an empty Cloud balance and set a client timeout, since a run that exhausts credit part-way reports Failed in dataset status instead
  6. Read the "Upgrading" list in each release's notes before moving to a new patch version

EverOS

  1. Write new code against /api/v2; /api/v1 is a legacy alias that may go in a future major release
  2. Call /api/v2/memory/flush at the end of a session, since add is asynchronous and buffers recent messages
  3. Retry on 503 SESSION_BUSY or EXTERNAL_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE after a pause; nothing was written
  4. Keep host at 127.0.0.1 unless something in front adds authentication
  5. Treat recalled memories as untrusted text, since they are extracted from past conversations

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Cognee or EverOS?

EverOS scores 69.4 (B) on agent readiness against Cognee's 47.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Can an agent call Cognee and EverOS without installing anything?

Cognee has a hosted endpoint at https://<tenant>.aws.cognee.ai/api/v1. EverOS runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

Are Cognee and EverOS open source?

Yes. Cognee is open source (Apache-2.0). EverOS is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Cognee or EverOS

Machine-readable

For companies

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