Head to head · Agent memory · October 2026 research run

EverOS vs Zep

Zep scores 71 (BB) on agent readiness against EverOS's 69.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. EverOS leads on reliability, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do agent memory.

Best memory layers for AI agents · All 353 memory comparisons

Which one, for what

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 70
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
  • Transparency & trust, 71 against 61

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where Zep loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

Zep BB

Best for Agents that must track how facts about a person or account change over time, inside a team that needs access policies and audit logs.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 87 against 78
  • Security & auth, 84 against 47

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The terms of 17 August 2026 grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to train models on customer data

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.

Security & auth Zep +37

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.

Zep 84

Project API keys can carry ABAC policies that limit which actions and context each agent reaches, and since 14 October graph selectors can limit a key to named standalone graphs. The MCP server uses OAuth 2.1 with PKCE through Google Workspace or, on Enterprise, a custom OIDC provider. We found no key expiry or rotation documentation (27 of 30). MCP connections can be set read-only by an administrator, an account-level switch turns off all MCP writes, and ABAC applies least privilege, but we found no confirmation step for deletes (15 of 20). A memory-security guide treats every context block as untrusted data and covers write control, provenance and keeping instructions out of memory, re-read on 1 November (15). Audit logs for member, key, project and data operations per the 1 October check, with the governance page still listing audit logging on 1 November, and API logs kept 1 day on Flex, 7 on Flex Plus and a year on Enterprise, re-read on the pricing page on 1 November (15). SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA on Enterprise and BYOK, but no security.txt (404 on 1 November), disclosure policy or bug bounty found (12 of 20).

Payments & pricing EverOS +10

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.

Zep 30

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Credits are priced per unit and public, 1 credit per 350 bytes of episode, overage $25 per 10,000 on Flex and $75 per 40,000 on Flex Plus (20). Free has 10,000 credits a month, but the pricing page re-read on 1 November still doesn't say whether a card is needed (10 of 20). A person signs up in the browser and creates a project key, and the MCP server needs a human identity-provider sign-in (0).

Transparency & trust EverOS +10

EverOS 71

Apache-2.0 with a NOTICE file (30). Local data stays in the owner's Markdown and indexes. For the cloud, the privacy policy gives no retention periods, the terms and privacy policy word the training exceptions differently, and the privacy contact link points to a miromind.ai address (12 of 30). The README marks /api/v1 as a legacy alias that may be removed in a future major release, and a 1.0 migration guide exists, with no notice period (14 of 20). No outbound telemetry was found in the source, and the docs don't address it (10 of 20). Total 66.

Zep 61

Closed service under clear terms, with Apache-2.0 examples and SDKs (15). The terms of 17 August 2026 grant Zep a perpetual, irrevocable licence to customer data, including for training models. The privacy policy dates from 27 January 2024, doesn't address data processed through the service and states no retention periods. Both dates were unchanged on 1 November. The two don't conflict, but together they say little (10 of 30). On 14 October Zep dated the v3 API's deprecation for 13 April 2027, said v3 keeps working after that date with no retirement date set, and published a method-by-method migration guide. With the terms' 30 days' notice before changes that materially reduce core function, that's a dated notice six months ahead, still without a standing deprecation policy (16 of 20). No subprocessor list or data-location statement found. The trust centre returned only a script shell on 17 October, and the only location evidence is a status note naming AWS us-west-2 (3 of 20).

Reliability EverOS +9

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.

Zep 70

Atlassian Statuspage at status.getzep.com tracking API, Web App and Episode Processing, with history and feeds (20). The 90 days from 3 August to 1 November hold six incidents. Two impaired core functions for over an hour, retrieval and episode processing on 27 August (about 2.5 hours) and errors and latency during the AWS us-west-2 outage on 3 September (about 2 hours). Two were search latency on 10 and 15 September (2.5 and 3.5 hours). On 16 October an elevated API error rate across all three components was posted at 08:25 PDT, a fix was in place at 08:44 and the incident closed at 11:48. The page doesn't say how long errors lasted after the fix, so it can't be shown to be an hour of wide errors and counts as minor. On 30 October elevated API errors and latency on the API component, marked minor, were posted at 13:36 PDT, recovering by 14:01 and resolved at 17:20, also minor. We count two majors as 5, between the rubric's 10 for one and 0 for several. Limits published per plan, 600 requests a minute on Flex and 1,000 on Flex Plus, with a 5 RPM penalty mode on Free (15). 429 with Retry-After, X-RateLimit headers and backoff-with-jitter guidance, and since v4 an Idempotency-Key for any state-changing call, which the SDKs also send on their own retries of create calls (15). Enterprise names "guaranteed rate limits with SLA" with no published figure (5 of 10). The v4 API is generally available since 14 October (10).

Agent ergonomics Zep +9

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.

Zep 87

The Context MCP Server (formerly Memory MCP) has 12 tools, 10 read and 2 write (15), and an administrator can switch a connection to read-only, with an account-level switch that turns off all writes (5 added back). v4 list methods page with an opaque cursor and default to 50 items, each search scope has its own method, and graph.get_subgraph reports truncated and the limit that stopped it (20). Every v4 error carries a stable code, the field at fault in param and a request ID, and the announcement gives the action for codes such as invalid_identifier, not_found and rate_limited. We didn't see the MCP server's error shape or a full code list (18 of 20). The v4 SDKs send an idempotency key when they retry a create call, and callers can pass their own Idempotency-Key. MCP tools are described as read or write, and readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations aren't confirmed (14 of 20). SDKs in Python, TypeScript and Go, and an episode add needs only data (15).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runEverOSZepEdge
Reliability16%207970EverOS +9
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28993Zep +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.27887Zep +9
Security & auth14%17.54784Zep +37
Payments & pricing10%12.54030EverOS +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88080even
Transparency & trust7%8.87161EverOS +10
Negative events≤150-3
TotalB 69.4/100BB 71/100

Facts side by side

FactEverOSZep
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorEvermind AI, Inc.Zep
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.getzep.com/api/v4
TransportsHTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0 (examples repo). The service is closed-source
Tools exposed712
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-222026-10-20
Terms last updated2026-01-202026-08-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-01-202024-01-27
Customer content may train modelsyesyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity14k stars, 4k PyPI/wk4.9k stars, 130k npm/wk, 87k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone4/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

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.

Zep

Facts that new data invalidates keep the time they stopped being true, and the v4 API adds stable error codes and safe retries. The terms of 17 August 2026 grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to train models on customer data.

Before you call either

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

Zep

  1. Use the 4.0.1 SDKs and store the UUID each create call returns. v4 calls take Zep UUIDs, not your own user or thread IDs
  2. Set return_context when adding messages to skip a second round trip
  3. Keep episodes short. Every 350 bytes past the first costs another credit
  4. Branch on error.code. On a 429, wait for Retry-After with jitter. Free accounts over quota drop to 5 requests a minute
  5. Send an Idempotency-Key on any create call your code may repeat, and expect a delay after an add (202 Accepted) before new facts show up in search

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, EverOS or Zep?

Zep scores 71 (BB) on agent readiness against EverOS's 69.4 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. EverOS leads on reliability, payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

Do EverOS and Zep need an API key?

EverOS needs no key. Zep takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call EverOS and Zep without installing anything?

EverOS runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Zep has a hosted endpoint at https://api.getzep.com/api/v4.

Are EverOS and Zep open source?

EverOS is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Zep.

Other comparisons with EverOS or Zep

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