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

CategoryWeight this runHonchoLangMemEdge
Reliability16%205032Honcho +18
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27955Honcho +24
Agent ergonomics13%16.26566LangMem +1
Security & auth14%17.54845Honcho +3
Payments & pricing10%12.58060Honcho +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87315Honcho +58
Transparency & trust7%8.86759Honcho +8
Negative events≤1500
Total64.1 · B47.9 · D

Facts side by side

FactHonchoLangMem
KindHTTP APISDK + MCP
VendorPlastic LabsLangChain
Hosted endpointhttps://api.honcho.dev/v3no (local only)
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPay per useFree
x402yes, from $0.001/callno
LicenceAGPL-3.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
MCP registryio.github.plastic-labs/honchonot listed
Last release2026-09-242025-10-27
Terms last updatedno date givenno document linked
Privacy policy last updated2025-04-24no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity7.4k stars, 18k npm/wk1.7k stars, 214k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (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

  1. Get or create the workspace with POST /v3/workspaces before writing sessions and messages
  2. Batch up to 100 messages per request, each under 25,000 characters
  3. Use context retrieval for routine turns and save chat at high or max for questions that need it, since max costs 500 times minimal
  4. Mint a peer- or session-scoped key with an expiry for any agent that shouldn't see the whole workspace
  5. Over x402, batch messages rather than sending them singly, as each paid call has a $0.001 floor

LangMem

  1. Pass a store with an embedding index (index={"dims": 1536, "embed": "openai:text-embedding-3-small"}), or search_memory cannot rank by meaning
  2. Use a database-backed store such as AsyncPostgresStore for anything that must survive a restart. InMemoryStore loses everything
  3. Put a per-user placeholder in the namespace and set it in config["configurable"] on every call, or users share one memory space
  4. Send the memory id with update and delete, and never with create. A retried create writes a duplicate under a new UUID
  5. Run on Python 3.11 or later. src/langmem/knowledge/extraction.py uses typing.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

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.