Head to head · Memory store · October 2026 research run
Honcho vs LangMem
Honcho scores 64.1 (B) on agent readiness against LangMem's 47.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do memory store. Honcho accepts x402. LangMem doesn't.
Which one, for what
Honcho B
Good for Products that model the people in a conversation and want to ask questions about them, and for agents that must pay their own way.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 50 against 32
- Schema & documentation, 79 against 55
- Payments & pricing, 80 against 60
- Maintenance & community, 73 against 15
- Transparency & trust, 67 against 59
Also in its favour
- An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
No published rate limits, 429 guidance or SLA
LangMem D
Good for Teams already on LangGraph that want memory tools and background extraction over a store they run.
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
Watch for
The newest PyPI release, 0.0.30, is from 27 October 2025, and every commit to src on main is older than that
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Honcho | LangMem | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 50 | 32 | Honcho +18 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 79 | 55 | Honcho +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 66 | LangMem +1 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 48 | 45 | Honcho +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 80 | 60 | Honcho +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 73 | 15 | Honcho +58 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 67 | 59 | Honcho +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 64.1 · B | 47.9 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Honcho | LangMem |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Plastic Labs | LangChain |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.honcho.dev/v3 | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | yes, from $0.001/call | no |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | io.github.plastic-labs/honcho | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2025-10-27 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-04-24 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Popularity | 7.4k stars, 18k npm/wk | 1.7k stars, 214k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
Honcho
Pay per call over x402 or MPP at agentcash.honcho.dev, with free read endpoints. No published rate limits, 429 guidance or SLA.
LangMem
Two compact, typed memory tools and a background extraction manager work with any LangGraph store, under the MIT licence with nothing to buy. The newest PyPI release, 0.0.30, dates from 27 October 2025. The repository has no changelog, tags or test workflow, and 23 of 54 open issues have no reply.
Before you call either
Honcho
- Get or create the workspace with POST /v3/workspaces before writing sessions and messages
- Batch up to 100 messages per request, each under 25,000 characters
- Use context retrieval for routine turns and save
chatat high or max for questions that need it, since max costs 500 times minimal - Mint a peer- or session-scoped key with an expiry for any agent that shouldn't see the whole workspace
- Over x402, batch messages rather than sending them singly, as each paid call has a $0.001 floor
LangMem
- Pass a store with an embedding index (
index={"dims": 1536, "embed": "openai:text-embedding-3-small"}), orsearch_memorycannot rank by meaning - Use a database-backed store such as
AsyncPostgresStorefor anything that must survive a restart.InMemoryStoreloses everything - Put a per-user placeholder in the namespace and set it in
config["configurable"]on every call, or users share one memory space - Send the memory
idwithupdateanddelete, and never withcreate. A retriedcreatewrites a duplicate under a new UUID - Run on Python 3.11 or later.
src/langmem/knowledge/extraction.pyusestyping.NotRequired, which Python 3.10 lacks
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Honcho or LangMem?
Honcho scores 64.1 (B) on agent readiness against LangMem's 47.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Can an agent call Honcho and LangMem without installing anything?
Honcho has a hosted endpoint at https://api.honcho.dev/v3. No hosted endpoint is listed for LangMem.
Are Honcho and LangMem open source?
Yes. Honcho is open source (AGPL-3.0). LangMem is open source (MIT).
Other comparisons with Honcho or LangMem
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs Honcho
- Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory vs LangMem
- Cognee vs Honcho
- Cognee vs LangMem
- Graphiti vs Honcho
- Graphiti vs LangMem
- Hindsight vs Honcho
- Hindsight vs LangMem
- Honcho vs LocalGhost
- Honcho vs Mem0 Platform + MCP
- Honcho vs Supermemory API + MCP
- Honcho vs Zep
- LangMem vs LocalGhost
- LangMem vs Mem0 Platform + MCP
- LangMem vs Supermemory API + MCP
- LangMem vs Zep
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/honcho-vs-langmem.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/honcho.json·/api/v1/tools/langmem.json - From a terminal
anchor compare honcho langmem(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "honcho", "b": "langmem"}at/mcp, no key