# Agent Platform Memory Bank vs Memory (MCP reference server) (slim)

> Agent Platform Memory Bank scores 65.6 (B) to Memory's 58.8 (C) for agent memory. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-memory-bank-vs-memory-reference-server.md (~5,950 tokens) · this version ~2,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-memory-bank-vs-memory-reference-server.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-memory-bank-vs-memory-reference-server
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Agent Platform Memory Bank scores 65.6 (B) on agent readiness against Memory (MCP reference server)'s 58.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Memory (MCP reference server) leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do agent memory.

- Agent Platform Memory Bank: B 65.6, rank #412 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-memory-bank.min.md
- Memory (MCP reference server): C 58.8, rank #724 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/memory-reference-server.min.md
- Agent Platform Memory Bank, good for Managed long-term memory for agents already on Google Cloud, especially with ADK and Agent Platform Sessions. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 75 against 70; Agent ergonomics, 75 against 67; Security & auth, 72 against 39; Transparency & trust, 81 against 76. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; No incidents deducted, where Memory (MCP reference server) loses 6 points for them.
- Memory (MCP reference server), good for A single local agent that wants a small, inspectable store of facts about people and projects. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 68; Payments & pricing, 60 against 20; Maintenance & community, 75 against 62. Also No key needed to call it; Runs on your own machine; Open source.

| Category | Agent Platform Memory Bank | Memory (MCP reference server) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 75 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 75 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 67 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 72 | 39 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 62 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 81 | 76 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Agent Platform Memory Bank | Memory (MCP reference server) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Google Cloud | MCP project (reference servers) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | stdio |
| Auth | OAuth | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| Licence | none | MIT and Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 9 |
| Last release | 2026-08-20 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-02 | 2021-09-08 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2023-03-15 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 90k stars, 136k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Memory (MCP reference server) +40: Agent Platform Memory Bank 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Storage, read and write prices are published without a login (20). No Memory Bank free tier found (0). A person creates the project, enables billing and sets up IAM in the console (0). Total 20.); Memory (MCP reference server) 60 (Free, self-hosted, nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20. No payment protocol (0).)
- Security & auth, Agent Platform Memory Bank +33: Agent Platform Memory Bank 72 (OAuth 2.0 with IAM and service accounts (30), less 10, as for the other Google API listings, because the v1 discovery document lists `access_token`, `oauth_token` and `key` as query parameters (20 of 30). IAM Conditions can restrict access by memory scope; purge and delete have no confirmation (15 of 20). Memories are written by an LLM from conversation content and returned to agents, with no injection guidance found (5 of 15). Access Transparency and Access Approval are listed; Cloud Audit Logs coverage for Memory Bank wasn't read (12 of 15). Google's valid security.txt, vulnerability reward programme and certifications, with HIPAA listed for Memory Bank (20). Total 72.); Memory (MCP reference server) 39 (No credentials, nothing to scope, so the middle band (20). No read-only mode. The three delete tools run without confirmation and annotations are the only signal a host gets. The file path is whatever `MEMORY_FILE_PATH` says (5). Everything stored comes back verbatim in later sessions, so an instruction an agent copied from a web page or document persists as memory. The README still has no guidance on this (2). No log of who changed what. Resource notifications say only that the graph changed (0). SECURITY.md was rewritten on 29 September 2026 and is on main since 1.0.0. It names this server in scope, takes private reports through GitHub, says fixes ship in the next release and publishes accepted advisories once a fixed release is out. modelcontextprotocol.io serves a security.txt with a contact and no Expires line. No bounty or certification. Graded as the sequential-thinking and filesystem servers and nanobot (12 of 20). OSV lists no advisory for the package on 4 November, and none of the GHSA-named branches merged in October touches this server. 20+5+2+0+12 = 39.)
- Maintenance & community, Memory (MCP reference server) +13: Agent Platform Memory Bank 62 (The newest Memory Bank release notes are of 20 August 2026 (IngestEvents GA, metadata, Gemini Embedding 2), 78 days before the check, and billing started on 1 September (20). Three Memory Bank entries in the 90 days, all on 20 August (10 of 20). Public release notes and Cloud Customer Care (12 of 15). `google-cloud-agentplatform` 2.7.0 on 28 October 2026, twelve releases in 90 days per its PyPI release feed, plus ADK (15). SDK test status not checked (5 of 10). Total 62.); Memory (MCP reference server) 75 (Memory 2.0.1, released with the monorepo's v2.2.0 tag on 28 October 2026, 7 days before this check (30). Four releases of this package in the 90 days from 6 August, 2026.8.31 (31 August), 1.0.0 (tag v1.0.0, 10 October), 2.0.0 (tag v2.0.0, 19 October) and 2.0.1 (tag v2.2.0, 28 October), each with code changes; v2.1.0 (24 October) left it at 2.0.0 (package.json read at each tag). Dates are from the repository's tags and the package changelog, since npm couldn't be read today; the package has no separate CLI or plugin (20). Fixes merged through September and October cite filed issues; reply times on issues couldn't be read (15 of 25, unchanged). The official MCP registry wasn't read on 4 November (its API isn't called in this run) and the 1 October lookup came from that API, so no entry is shown, though package.json carries the mcpName io.github.modelcontextprotocol/server-memory (0). Current SDK (`@modelcontextprotocol/server` ^2.3.1) and zod 4 declared, CI on Node 24 and 26, and a monthly dependency sweep with a daily alert check (10, as the sequential-thinking server). 30+20+15+0+10 = 75.)
- Agent ergonomics, Agent Platform Memory Bank +8: Agent Platform Memory Bank 75 (Retrieval takes a scope and similarity search with a result limit (20 of 25). List methods page with page tokens and filters (16 of 20). Google's standard error model with status codes (15 of 20). Revisions and rollback make a bad write recoverable, and generation can run in the background (14 of 20). Python SDK and ADK integration, with REST for other languages (10 of 15). Total 75.); Memory (MCP reference server) 67 (Nine tools with short descriptions, but the entity and relation schemas repeat in every output schema, so tools/list runs to about 10,700 characters or roughly 2,700 tokens by the 1 October count, with a `$schema` line on each schema since 2.0.0 (22). No pagination, limit or field selection anywhere. `read_graph` returns the whole graph and `search_nodes` returns every substring match (5). Since 1.0.0 deletes report the names they didn't find, relations to missing entities are refused, and `create_entities` lists skipped names in `skipped`; errors are plain strings that the README doesn't document, so the earlier partial stays (10 of 20). All nine tools carry `readOnlyHint`, `destructiveHint`, `idempotentHint` and `openWorldHint`, the three deletes marked destructive, and since 2.0.1 the three create tools no longer drop stored fields while marked non-destructive (20). At most one required parameter per tool. Node only, plus Docker (10). 22+5+10+20+10 = 67.)
- Reliability, Memory (MCP reference server) +7: Agent Platform Memory Bank 68 (Hosted lines. Google Cloud status dashboard with per-product history (20). Its incident feed, read on 6 November 2026, holds four incidents since 8 August (20 August, 27 products; 1 September, us-central1-b; 8 October, Cloud Storage; 20 October, europe-west2, 38 products), and none names Agent Platform, Vertex or Memory Bank (30). No Memory Bank quotas or rate limits were found; the platform quotas path guessed returned 404 (0, unchecked). Generation is a long-running operation with wait and cancel methods, and Google's retry guidance wasn't re-read for this API (8 of 15). No SLA for Memory Bank was found in the pages read (0, unchecked). Memory profiles, IngestEvents and multi-regional endpoints are GA (10). Total 68.); Memory (MCP reference server) 75 (Scored as a local stdio package. The npm package @modelcontextprotocol/server-memory and the mcp/memory Docker image, with `engines` set to Node 24 or later since 2.0.0 and the README stating the same (20). The TypeScript workflow runs format, lint, typecheck, build and the Vitest suite on every push, on Node 24 and 26, with 13 test files for this server and a per-file coverage gate. Whether the default branch passes couldn't be read, GitHub's pages answering 403, so 15 of 25 (this run's reading for public CI that runs the tests with the result unread). The issue list wasn't readable. The eleven September fixes, the race in #4555 among them, shipped in 1.0.0 with fixes for #4797, #4827 and #4887, and 2.0.1 fixed #5058 and the failed-migration case (15 of 25). Since 1.0.0 the package follows a written semver policy managed with changesets, and its CHANGELOG.md lists 2.0.0's breaking changes under Major Changes (15). Version 2.0.1, but the repository README and SECURITY.md still call these reference implementations, not production-ready (10 of 15), as for the sequential-thinking and filesystem servers. 20+15+15+15+10 = 75.)
- Schema & documentation, Agent Platform Memory Bank +5: Agent Platform Memory Bank 75 (Google's discovery document is a machine-readable contract for every memory method (25). No llms.txt or Markdown docs found (0). Method descriptions are 13 to 39 characters, one-line summaries, while the guides explain when to generate from sessions or from direct facts (12 of 20). Typed schemas with required fields in the discovery document (12 of 15). Python examples, a troubleshooting page and a documented 404 for deleted memories (11 of 15). v1 and v1beta1 and dated release notes (15). Total 75.); Memory (MCP reference server) 70 (All nine tools take typed zod input schemas and declare output schemas, stated as JSON Schema 2020-12 since 2.0.0 (25). No llms.txt. The README is Markdown on GitHub with JSON examples (5). Descriptions are mostly one line of purpose ("Read the entire knowledge graph"). Since 1.0.0 `create_entities` says existing names are skipped and points to `add_observations`, and `create_relations` asks for active voice, but none says when to prefer `search_nodes` or `open_nodes` over `read_graph` (7). Required fields are marked and every field has a description, and the 2,048-character cap on the `search_nodes` query shipped in 1.0.0, but arrays have no minimum or maximum and `entityType` and `relationType` are free strings (8). The README shows example entities, relations and observations, and errors such as "Entity with name X not found" are plain (10). A per-package CHANGELOG.md with Major, Minor and Patch sections from 1.0.0, and dated release tags (15). 25+5+7+8+10+15 = 70.)