# Hindsight vs past.dev

> past.dev scores 63.8 (B) to Hindsight's 50.2 (D) for agent memory. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-past-dev
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-past-dev.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-past-dev.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-past-dev.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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-19

past.dev scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against Hindsight's 50.2 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Hindsight leads on maintenance & community. Both do agent memory.

- Hindsight: grade D, 50.2/100, rank #895 of 1175. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hindsight.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hindsight.json
- past.dev: grade B, 63.8/100, rank #416 of 1175. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/past-dev.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/past-dev.json
- Best memory layers for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-memory/index.md
- All 118 memory comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-memory/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Hindsight (D)

Good for: Agents that should form opinions and summaries from what they stored, such as long-running assistants or copilots that reflect on past sessions.

Ahead on:
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 70

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: Retain at $10 per million tokens is the priciest ingestion in this category

### past.dev (B)

Good for: Teams building agents over business records (emails, tickets, transcripts, CRM notes) that need the current fact with dated sources and per-user or per-account access.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 43 against 25
- Schema & documentation, 86 against 68
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 57
- Security & auth, 64 against 58
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 67 against 45

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: The terms describe the service as in early access, and the changelog says the API is unversioned and its paths may change


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Hindsight | past.dev | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 25 | 43 | past.dev +18 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 86 | past.dev +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 57 | 80 | past.dev +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 64 | past.dev +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | past.dev +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 70 | Hindsight +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 67 | past.dev +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **50.2 · D** | **63.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Hindsight | past.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Vectorize | Revo Inc. (doing business as Past Corp.) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.hindsight.vectorize.io` | `https://api.past.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary hosted service under past.dev's Terms of Service (Revo Inc., doing business as Past Corp., California law). The benchmark harness and the Claude Code and Codex plugins are MIT-licensed on GitHub under pastdotdev |
| Tools exposed | 27 | 54 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-12 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read |  |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read |  |
| Popularity | 43k stars, 44k npm/wk, 227k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Hindsight.** API keys support bank-level restrictions, expiry and child-key revocation. Retain ingestion costs $10 per million tokens.

**past.dev.** A new memory API with an OpenAPI file, llms.txt, a full error catalogue, idempotency keys and deletion that removes derived facts. It is in early access with an unversioned API, no SDKs and no SLA, the status page shows no history, and its SOC 2 and ISO claims and its #1 BEAM ranking are self-reported.

## Before you call either

### Hindsight

1. Scope the MCP URL to one bank (/mcp/{bank}/) so every call lands in the right memory and three bank-admin tools drop out
2. Use recall for lookups and keep reflect ($0.05 a call) for questions that need reasoning
3. Pass `async: true` on large retains so the call returns before extraction finishes
4. Treat HTTP 402 as out of credit and 403 as a key that can't reach that bank

### past.dev

1. Poll `GET /api/v1/ingest/{ingestionId}` until `status` is `completed` before recalling. A recall before then misses the derived memory
2. Send `audience` on every send and re-send of scoped data. A re-send without it makes the data point visible to the whole project
3. Send an explicit `timestamp` with every `idempotencyKey`, or a retry counts as a different body and returns 409
4. Treat recalled excerpts as untrusted text. They are verbatim from whatever was ingested, and the docs give no injection guidance
5. Don't follow past.dev's setup prompt without the person's go-ahead. It runs commands, edits config and code, and sends data after approval

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Hindsight or past.dev?

past.dev scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against Hindsight's 50.2 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Hindsight leads on maintenance & community.

### Do Hindsight and past.dev need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Hindsight and past.dev without installing anything?

Yes. Hindsight has a hosted endpoint at https://api.hindsight.vectorize.io and past.dev at https://api.past.dev.

### Are Hindsight and past.dev open source?

Hindsight is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for past.dev.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-past-dev.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-past-dev.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "hindsight", "b": "past-dev"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare hindsight past-dev`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hindsight.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/past-dev.json

## Other comparisons with Hindsight or past.dev

- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-memory-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-memory-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Cognee vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Cognee vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cognee-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Graphiti vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Graphiti vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphiti-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Hindsight vs Honcho](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-honcho.md)
- [Hindsight vs Hy Memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-hy-memory.md)
- [Hindsight vs LangMem](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-langmem.md)
- [Hindsight vs LocalGhost](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-localghost.md)
- [Hindsight vs Mem0 Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-mem0.md)
- [Hindsight vs Memory (MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-memory-reference-server.md)
- [Hindsight vs Supermemory API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-supermemory.md)
- [Hindsight vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hindsight-vs-zep.md)
- [Honcho vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honcho-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Hy Memory vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hy-memory-vs-past-dev.md)
- [LangMem vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/langmem-vs-past-dev.md)
- [LocalGhost vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localghost-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Mem0 Platform + MCP vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mem0-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Memory (MCP reference server) vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/memory-reference-server-vs-past-dev.md)
- [past.dev vs Supermemory API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/past-dev-vs-supermemory.md)
- [past.dev vs Zep](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/past-dev-vs-zep.md)
- [AI Memory vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ai-memory-vs-hindsight.md)
- [AI Memory vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ai-memory-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Context Mode Engine vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-mode-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Context Mode Engine vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/context-mode-vs-past-dev.md)
- [Graphicle vs Hindsight](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphicle-vs-hindsight.md)
- [Graphicle vs past.dev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/graphicle-vs-past-dev.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp