# Graphiti vs Zep

> Zep has a score of 69.6 (B) against Graphiti's 53.3 (D). Both do memory store. The largest gap is security & auth, 61 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Zep has a score of 69.6 (B) against Graphiti's 53.3 (D). Both do memory store. The largest gap is security & auth, 61 points.

- Graphiti: grade D, 53.3/100, rank #333 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/graphiti.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/graphiti.json
- Zep: grade B, 69.6/100, rank #112 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zep.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zep.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Graphiti for payments & pricing (+30), transparency & trust (+10).

Pick Zep for reliability (+15), schema & documentation (+18), agent ergonomics (+19), security & auth (+61), maintenance & community (+15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Graphiti | Zep | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 65 | Zep +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 89 | Zep +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 70 | Zep +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 23 | 84 | Zep +61 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | Graphiti +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 80 | Zep +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 61 | Graphiti +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **53.3 · D** | **69.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Graphiti | Zep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Zep | Zep |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.getzep.com/api/v2` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (examples repo). The service is closed-source |
| Tools exposed | 13 | 12 |
| 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 | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-24 |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 151k PyPI/wk | 4.9k stars, 130k npm/wk, 87k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**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.

## Before you call either

### 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

## Other comparisons with Graphiti or Zep

- [Cognee vs Graphiti](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-graphiti.md)
- [Cognee vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-zep.md)
- [Graphiti vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Graphiti vs Honcho](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-honcho.md)
- [Graphiti vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-localghost.md)
- [Graphiti vs Mem0 Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-mem0.md)
- [Graphiti vs Supermemory API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-supermemory.md)
- [Hindsight vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-zep.md)
- [Honcho vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honcho-vs-zep.md)
- [LocalGhost vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localghost-vs-zep.md)
- [Mem0 Platform + MCP vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mem0-vs-zep.md)
- [Supermemory API + MCP vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/supermemory-vs-zep.md)