Graphiti vs Zep

Graphiti

Apache-2.0, with FalkorDB, Neo4j or Amazon Neptune as the store. Every add runs LLM extraction, so ingestion costs tokens and time.

Zep

Facts that new data invalidates keep the time they stopped being true. The terms of 17 August 2026 grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to train models on customer data.

Graphiti

1. Set OPENAI_API_KEY (or another provider's key) and MODEL_NAME before starting the MCP server
2. Use search_memory_facts for facts and search_nodes for entities instead of reading whole episodes
3. Never call clear_graph to fix one fact. Use delete_episode or delete_entity_edge
4. Pass group_ids on every search and add so one user's graph doesn't leak into another's
5. Call get_status to check the database connection before a long ingest

Zep

1. Create the user and a thread before adding messages, as the quickstart does
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. Read Retry-After on a 429 and back off with jitter. Free accounts over quota drop to 5 requests a minute
5. Expect a delay after a graph add (202 Accepted) before new facts show up in search