# MemMachine vs Zep (slim)

> Zep scores 71 (BB) to MemMachine's 58 (C) for agent memory. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/memmachine-vs-zep.md (~4,850 tokens) · this version ~2,580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/memmachine-vs-zep.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/memmachine-vs-zep
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Zep scores 71 (BB) on agent readiness against MemMachine's 58 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. MemMachine leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent memory.

- MemMachine: C 58, rank #771 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/memmachine.min.md
- Zep: BB 71, rank #176 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zep.min.md
- MemMachine, good for Self-hosted memory for agent frameworks that want episodic and profile memory with many integrations. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 40 against 30. Also No key needed to call it; Runs on your own machine; Open source; No incidents deducted, where Zep loses 3 points for them.
- Zep, good for Agents that must track how facts about a person or account change over time, inside a team that needs access policies and audit logs. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 51; Schema & documentation, 93 against 79; Agent ergonomics, 87 against 65; Security & auth, 84 against 41. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Free to start without a card.

| Category | MemMachine | Zep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 51 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 79 | 93 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 65 | 87 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 41 | 84 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 83 | 80 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 57 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | MemMachine | Zep |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | MemVerge, Inc. | Zep |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.getzep.com/api/v4` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (examples repo). The service is closed-source |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 12 |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-20 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-08-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-20 | 2024-01-27 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 3.1k stars, 28 npm/wk, 581 PyPI/wk | 4.9k stars, 130k npm/wk, 87k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Zep +43: MemMachine 41 (Framework reading for software the owner runs. The server has no authentication and no security scheme in its OpenAPI document (15 of 30). No read-only mode or confirmation for deletes (5 of 20). No guidance on recalled memories as untrusted text (4 of 15). No audit log on the self-hosted server; the hosted console shows usage (5 of 15). SECURITY.md with GitHub private reporting and a two-business-day acknowledgement, with security-audit and SBOM workflows; no security.txt or certification (12 of 20). Total 41.); Zep 84 (Project API keys can carry ABAC policies that limit which actions and context each agent reaches, and since 14 October graph selectors can limit a key to named standalone graphs. The MCP server uses OAuth 2.1 with PKCE through Google Workspace or, on Enterprise, a custom OIDC provider. We found no key expiry or rotation documentation (27 of 30). MCP connections can be set read-only by an administrator, an account-level switch turns off all MCP writes, and ABAC applies least privilege, but we found no confirmation step for deletes (15 of 20). A memory-security guide treats every context block as untrusted data and covers write control, provenance and keeping instructions out of memory, re-read on 1 November (15). Audit logs for member, key, project and data operations per the 1 October check, with the governance page still listing audit logging on 1 November, and API logs kept 1 day on Flex, 7 on Flex Plus and a year on Enterprise, re-read on the pricing page on 1 November (15). SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA on Enterprise and BYOK, but no security.txt (404 on 1 November), disclosure policy or bug bounty found (12 of 20).)
- Agent ergonomics, Zep +22: MemMachine 65 (Searches take limit and filter options for episodic and semantic results (20 of 25). Memories can be listed and filtered by scope (15 of 20). Validation errors are typed; other failures are less clear, as the 429-to-500 issue shows (10 of 20). No idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance found (5 of 20). Python and TypeScript clients and a five-line quick start, once the import is fixed (15). Total 65.); Zep 87 (The Context MCP Server (formerly Memory MCP) has 12 tools, 10 read and 2 write (15), and an administrator can switch a connection to read-only, with an account-level switch that turns off all writes (5 added back). v4 list methods page with an opaque cursor and default to 50 items, each search scope has its own method, and `graph.get_subgraph` reports `truncated` and the limit that stopped it (20). Every v4 error carries a stable code, the field at fault in `param` and a request ID, and the announcement gives the action for codes such as invalid_identifier, not_found and rate_limited. We didn't see the MCP server's error shape or a full code list (18 of 20). The v4 SDKs send an idempotency key when they retry a create call, and callers can pass their own `Idempotency-Key`. MCP tools are described as read or write, and readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations aren't confirmed (14 of 20). SDKs in Python, TypeScript and Go, and an episode add needs only `data` (15).)
- Reliability, Zep +19: 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.); Zep 70 (Atlassian Statuspage at status.getzep.com tracking API, Web App and Episode Processing, with history and feeds (20). The 90 days from 3 August to 1 November hold six incidents. Two impaired core functions for over an hour, retrieval and episode processing on 27 August (about 2.5 hours) and errors and latency during the AWS us-west-2 outage on 3 September (about 2 hours). Two were search latency on 10 and 15 September (2.5 and 3.5 hours). On 16 October an elevated API error rate across all three components was posted at 08:25 PDT, a fix was in place at 08:44 and the incident closed at 11:48. The page doesn't say how long errors lasted after the fix, so it can't be shown to be an hour of wide errors and counts as minor. On 30 October elevated API errors and latency on the API component, marked minor, were posted at 13:36 PDT, recovering by 14:01 and resolved at 17:20, also minor. We count two majors as 5, between the rubric's 10 for one and 0 for several. Limits published per plan, 600 requests a minute on Flex and 1,000 on Flex Plus, with a 5 RPM penalty mode on Free (15). 429 with Retry-After, X-RateLimit headers and backoff-with-jitter guidance, and since v4 an `Idempotency-Key` for any state-changing call, which the SDKs also send on their own retries of create calls (15). Enterprise names "guaranteed rate limits with SLA" with no published figure (5 of 10). The v4 API is generally available since 14 October (10).)
- Schema & documentation, Zep +14: 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.); Zep 93 (OpenAPI 3.1 for v4 (147 paths, server api.getzep.com/api/v4) at help.getzep.com/openapi/sdk-reference.json, reached from the index at help.getzep.com/openapi.json that llms.txt names. The v3 link the listing carried returned 404 on 17 October (25). llms.txt per version, a Markdown copy of every page at `.md`, and a docs MCP server (10). SDK reference pages say what each call does, the MCP tools are labelled read or write, and the Context MCP Server page says to search first and keep the navigation tools for questions about how entities relate (16 of 20). Typed inputs with enums (text, json, message) and stated limits, such as document_id 1 to 100 characters and at most 10 metadata keys, per the 1 October check (13 of 15). Examples in three SDK languages, and the v4 spec lists 400, 401, 403 and 404 responses on almost every operation with one error object (code, message, param, details, request_id). We found no complete list of codes (14 of 15). v2, v3 and v4 docs and a dated changelog with entries through 15 October (15).)
- Payments & pricing, MemMachine +10: 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.); Zep 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Credits are priced per unit and public, 1 credit per 350 bytes of episode, overage $25 per 10,000 on Flex and $75 per 40,000 on Flex Plus (20). Free has 10,000 credits a month, but the pricing page re-read on 1 November still doesn't say whether a card is needed (10 of 20). A person signs up in the browser and creates a project key, and the MCP server needs a human identity-provider sign-in (0).)