# Cognee vs Hy Memory

> Hy Memory scores 57.7 (C) to Cognee's 54.6 (C) for agent memory. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-16

Hy Memory scores 57.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cognee's 54.6 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cognee leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do agent memory.

- Cognee: grade C, 54.6/100, rank #733 of 1099. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cognee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cognee.json
- Hy Memory: grade C, 57.7/100, rank #639 of 1099. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hy-memory.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hy-memory.json
- Best memory layers for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-memory/index.md
- All 77 memory comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-memory/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Cognee (C)

Good 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 55
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 76

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.5 out of 5

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

### Hy Memory (C)

Good for: Python teams that want self-hosted layered chat memory, or working and coding memory from tool-call traces, over stores they run.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 65 against 50
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- No incidents deducted, where Cognee loses 3 points for them

Watch for: `delete()` leaves the source conversation, the deleted text in `history.db` and extraction prompts in `cache.db`, and can reactivate a superseded fact


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cognee | Hy Memory | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 65 | Hy Memory +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 55 | Cognee +30 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 60 | Hy Memory +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 39 | 37 | Cognee +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 60 | Hy Memory +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 76 | Cognee +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 62 | Cognee +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.6 · C** | **57.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cognee | Hy Memory |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Platform | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Cognee | Tencent Hunyuan |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://<tenant>.aws.cognee.ai/api/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (PyPI metadata for the 1.x releases and 2.0.1 says MIT; 2.0.2 carries Apache-2.0) |
| Tools exposed | 7 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-27 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 31k stars, 21k PyPI/wk | 27 stars, 147 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Hy Memory.** An Apache-2.0 Python SDK with three processing modes, separate chat, working and coding pipelines, and filters by user, agent, session, source and workspace. Deletion does not stick everywhere. `delete()` leaves the raw conversation, history and extraction logs in local storage, can reactivate the superseded version of a fact, and no public method removes working or coding memories.

## 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. 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

### Hy Memory

1. Pass `user_id` on every `add()` and `user_ids` on every `search()`. Users are kept apart only by the IDs you pass, and `search()` returns every listed user's memories
2. Choose the mode before writing. `lite` makes no LLM calls and stores raw text. `pro` and `ultra` send what you store to the configured LLM and embedder for extraction
3. Don't rely on `delete()` to erase a fact. The raw conversation, `history.db` and `cache.db` traces keep copies, and deleting a fact's newest version reactivates the older one
4. Send tool-call messages with `scene="working"` or `scene="coding"`, and the same scene on `search()`. Without tool messages a write falls back to chat memory
5. Keep `python -m hy_memory.server` on 127.0.0.1. It has no authentication and allows any web origin

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cognee or Hy Memory?

Hy Memory scores 57.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cognee's 54.6 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cognee leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community.

### Are Cognee and Hy Memory open source?

Yes. Cognee is open source (Apache-2.0). Hy Memory is open source (Apache-2.0 (PyPI metadata for the 1.x releases and 2.0.1 says MIT; 2.0.2 carries Apache-2.0)).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-hy-memory.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-hy-memory.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "cognee", "b": "hy-memory"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare cognee hy-memory`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cognee.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hy-memory.json

## Other comparisons with Cognee or Hy Memory

- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs Cognee](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-memory-vs-cognee.md)
- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs Hy Memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-memory-vs-hy-memory.md)
- [Cognee vs Graphicle](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-graphicle.md)
- [Cognee vs Graphiti](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-graphiti.md)
- [Cognee vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Cognee vs Honcho](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-honcho.md)
- [Cognee vs LangMem](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-langmem.md)
- [Cognee vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-localghost.md)
- [Cognee vs Mem0 Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-mem0.md)
- [Cognee vs Memory (MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-memory-reference-server.md)
- [Cognee vs Supermemory API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-supermemory.md)
- [Cognee vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-zep.md)
- [Graphiti vs Hy Memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-hy-memory.md)
- [Hindsight vs Hy Memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-hy-memory.md)
- [Honcho vs Hy Memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honcho-vs-hy-memory.md)
- [Hy Memory vs LangMem](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-langmem.md)
- [Hy Memory vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-localghost.md)
- [Hy Memory vs Mem0 Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-mem0.md)
- [Hy Memory vs Memory (MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-memory-reference-server.md)
- [Hy Memory vs Supermemory API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-supermemory.md)
- [Hy Memory vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-zep.md)
- [Graphicle vs Hy Memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphicle-vs-hy-memory.md)

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