Head to head · Agent memory · October 2026 research run

LangMem vs MemMachine

MemMachine scores 58 (C) on agent readiness against LangMem's 47.7 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. LangMem leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do agent memory.

Best memory layers for AI agents · All 353 memory comparisons

Which one, for what

LangMem D

Best for Teams already on LangGraph that want memory tools and background extraction over a store they run.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 57

Watch for

No release found in over a year. The newest version, 0.0.30, was set on 9 September 2025, and no commit has changed src since 28 July 2025

MemMachine C

Best for Self-hosted memory for agent frameworks that want episodic and profile memory with many integrations.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 51 against 32
  • Schema & documentation, 79 against 55
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 15

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

Version 0.4.0 of 6 October 2026, pre-1.0, with no changelog file in the repository

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community MemMachine +68

LangMem 15

No release found in the last 180 days. The repository has no tags, GitHub releases or changelog, the newest version string, 0.0.30, was set in pyproject.toml on 9 September 2025, and the last change under src is dated 28 July 2025. PyPI's release dates could not be read on 4 November (0). No release in the last 90 days (0). Of 54 open issues 23 had no comment, 19 pull requests were open with the oldest from June 2025, and nine of the ten pull requests opened since 1 August 2026 had no comment, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 4 November (5 of 25). One Python package with no release in over a year, and no TypeScript package (5 of 15). Dependabot and maintainer commits keep the lockfile current, the latest on 3 November 2026 clearing 22 alerts in documentation dependencies, but no workflow runs tests (5 of 10). 0+0+5+5+5 = 15.

MemMachine 83

v0.4.0 on PyPI on 8 October 2026, 29 days before the check (30). v0.3.9-post1, v0.4.0, v0.4.1-dev0 and v0.4.1-a1 in 90 days (20). Many open issues and recent reports with few replies (12 of 25). Python and TypeScript clients, both current (12 of 15). uv lock checks, security audit, SBOM and stale-issue workflows (9 of 10). Total 83.

Schema & documentation MemMachine +24

LangMem 55

Library reading, with the tool lines applied to the two agent tools. No OpenAPI applies. Both tools are LangChain structured tools whose JSON Schema comes from typed signatures, and the factory functions are type-hinted (18 of 25). langchain-ai.github.io/langmem/llms.txt returns 404 (0). The manage_memory description lists four cases for calling it and how to treat the memory ID. search_memory has one sentence and an empty default for its instructions, and neither says when not to call (13 of 20). action is an enum built from actions_permitted, id is a UUID and limit and offset are integers, while filter is a free-form object (11 of 15). Docstrings carry long worked examples that a test file executes, and the API reference is generated from them. Error behaviour is not documented (10 of 15). Version numbers exist only on PyPI, with no changelog (3 of 15).

MemMachine 79

OpenAPI documents for the server (54 operations) and the hosted platform (12) (25). llms.txt on docs.memmachine.ai with Markdown pages (10). Every operation has a description, and the docs explain memory types and scoping (15 of 20). Typed request models generated from the server, with search options for limits and filters (12 of 15). Examples for each client and the MCP tools, but only 422 is documented on the server and the README's first example doesn't run (8 of 15). /api/v2 paths and tagged releases, no changelog (9 of 15). Total 79.

Payments & pricing LangMem +20

LangMem 60

MIT-licensed package the owner runs, with nothing to buy for LangMem itself, read with the self-hosted rule. 20 for pricing, 20 for a free start and 20 for use without an account. No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs or source (0). LLM, embedding and database costs are the owner's.

MemMachine 40

Self-hosted rule, with the price lines read for the hosted platform. No x402, MPP or L402 (0 of 40). No hosted prices found on the site or docs (0). Free to self-host with no card (20). An agent can install it from PyPI with no account (20). Total 40.

Reliability MemMachine +19

LangMem 32

Local-software reading. Installs from PyPI as langmem with Python 3.10 or later declared, but extraction.py on main uses typing.NotRequired, which arrived in Python 3.11, and issues 81 and 83 about failed imports on 3.10 are open (per the 8 October check). We read the source and did not run it on 3.10 (14 of 20). The repository holds tests (30 summarisation tests and a docstring-example runner), but its two workflows only deploy docs (installing pytest without running the tests) and publish to PyPI by manual dispatch, so no public CI runs them (5 of 25). 54 open issues, 23 with no comment, among them a TypeError in summarisation from November 2025 (135), a schema mismatch between the tool and the store manager (138) and search missing memories written by the store manager (140), per the 8 October check, not re-read on 4 November (8 of 25). Versions are 0.0.x with no changelog, GitHub releases or tags, and open issue 130 shows 0.0.30 was cut to restore compatibility with LangGraph 1.0 (5 of 15). Below 1.0 and not declared stable (0). 14+5+8+5+0 = 32.

MemMachine 51

Local-software lines, as a server the owner runs. memmachine-server and memmachine-client on PyPI with Python versions stated, a Docker image and a compose script (20). pytest, integration and installation-test workflows exist, but GitHub's API answered with a rate limit, so run results were unread (15 of 25, unchecked). 292 open issues and pull requests; the newest bug reports, including a 429 from a provider surfacing as a 500 and a 0.4.0 configuration that no longer starts, have zero to two replies (10 of 25). No changelog file, release notes only on GitHub, which weren't read, and pre-1.0 tags (6 of 15). Version 0.4.0 (0). Total 51.

Transparency & trust LangMem +6

LangMem 63

MIT licence in the repository and on PyPI (30). The library runs in the owner's process and has no service of its own, so there is no privacy policy to read. The docs show which model and embedding provider each example calls and that memories live in the owner's store, without a statement on what leaves the process (18 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices were found (0 of 20). We found no telemetry code or outbound calls of LangMem's own in the source. Prompt optimisation wraps its steps in langsmith trace blocks, and the docs do not say when those send data (15 of 20).

MemMachine 57

Apache-2.0 (30). The terms say hosted customer data is destroyed on termination, with no period, and use usage data only in aggregate; the privacy policy wasn't read (12 of 30). No deprecation policy or notices found (3 of 20). No telemetry calls found in the server or client source, and the docs don't address it (10 of 20). Total 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLangMemMemMachineEdge
Reliability16%203251MemMachine +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25579MemMachine +24
Agent ergonomics13%16.26665LangMem +1
Security & auth14%17.54241LangMem +1
Payments & pricing10%12.56040LangMem +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81583MemMachine +68
Transparency & trust7%8.86357LangMem +6
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 47.7/100C 58/100

Facts side by side

FactLangMemMemMachine
KindSDK + MCPHTTP API
VendorLangChainMemVerge, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Tools exposednone3
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2025-10-272026-10-08
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-05-20
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetyes
Popularity1.7k stars3.1k stars, 28 npm/wk, 581 PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

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 version, 0.0.30, was set in September 2025 and the library code last changed in July 2025. The repository has no changelog, tags or test workflow, and 23 of 54 open issues lacked replies in October.

MemMachine

MemMachine is an Apache-2.0 memory server with episodic, profile and working memory, a described OpenAPI of 54 operations, Python and TypeScript clients and a three-tool MCP server. It is version 0.4.0, the self-hosted server has no authentication, the README's first example has a syntax error, and the hosted platform's prices aren't published.

Before you call either

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

MemMachine

  1. Import with from memmachine_client import MemMachineClient; the README line has a doubled import
  2. Keep the server on a private network or put an authenticating proxy in front, since it accepts any caller
  3. Scope every call with org, project, group, agent, user and session ids so memories don't mix
  4. Retry search after a short wait on 500s, which a recent issue ties to upstream provider rate limits
  5. Treat recalled episodes as untrusted text from past conversations

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LangMem or MemMachine?

MemMachine scores 58 (C) on agent readiness against LangMem's 47.7 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. LangMem leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

Can an agent call LangMem and MemMachine without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for LangMem. MemMachine runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

Are LangMem and MemMachine open source?

Yes. LangMem is open source (MIT). MemMachine is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with LangMem or MemMachine

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