# Cognee vs LocalGhost

> Cognee has a score of 54.6 (C) against LocalGhost's 45.8 (E). Both do memory store. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 57 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-localghost
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-localghost.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-localghost.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-localghost.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Cognee has a score of 54.6 (C) against LocalGhost's 45.8 (E). Both do memory store. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 57 points.

- Cognee: grade C, 54.6/100, rank #320 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cognee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cognee.json
- LocalGhost: grade E, 45.8/100, rank #396 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/localghost.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/localghost.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Cognee for schema & documentation (+41), agent ergonomics (+57), maintenance & community (+11).

Pick LocalGhost for reliability (+9), security & auth (+13), payments & pricing (+25), transparency & trust (+10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cognee | LocalGhost | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 59 | LocalGhost +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 44 | Cognee +41 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 2 | Cognee +57 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 39 | 52 | LocalGhost +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 60 | LocalGhost +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 71 | Cognee +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 77 | LocalGhost +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **54.6 · C** | **45.8 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cognee | LocalGhost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Cognee | LocalGhost |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://<tenant>.aws.cognee.ai/api/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, SSE (legacy) | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | Token |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 7 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | none |
| Popularity | 31k stars, 21k PyPI/wk | 16 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

## 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.

**LocalGhost.** The server and Android app are MIT-licensed, with no telemetry libraries found. There is no agent API, MCP server or SDK; unpaired callers receive HTTP 503.

## 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

### LocalGhost

1. Don't call a LocalGhost box. Every request without the paired phone's certificate gets a 503 that looks like an outage
2. Reach a person's LocalGhost archive through the person and their phone. Nothing in wisp 0.0.3 opens it to an agent
3. Read a 503 from a box as no certificate, a retired phone, a locked box or a down daemon. The response never says which
4. Don't treat the README's list of what leaves the phone as complete. The app also calls Frankfurter, Wikipedia's summary API and Android's geocoder
5. Run `ghost-cli ghost.<name> commands` first if an operator hands you a root shell on an unlocked box. It lists command names only, takes key=value arguments and prints JSON

## Other comparisons with Cognee or LocalGhost

- [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 Mem0 Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-mem0.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 LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-localghost.md)
- [Hindsight vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-localghost.md)
- [Honcho vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honcho-vs-localghost.md)
- [LocalGhost vs Mem0 Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localghost-vs-mem0.md)
- [LocalGhost vs Supermemory API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localghost-vs-supermemory.md)
- [LocalGhost vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localghost-vs-zep.md)
- [AnythingLLM vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-localghost.md)
- [GPT4All vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-localghost.md)
- [Khoj vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/khoj-vs-localghost.md)
- [LocalGhost vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localghost-vs-screenpipe.md)

## Disclosure

- LocalGhost is built by Anchor Terminal's founder. Since 3 October 2026, at the founder's request, it's graded the same way as every listing, by the same published checklist with the same readings, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed. The review panel doesn't review it, and letme never picks it.