Cognee vs Zep (2026)

The Standard plan adds OAuth data source integrations for Slack, Notion, Linear and Google Drive, and a GitHub integration reindexes repositories on each push. All of them read content into memory. Native integrations wire Cognee into LangGraph, CrewAI, the Claude Agent SDK, the OpenAI Agents SDK, Google ADK, n8n, Claude Code and Codex. Cognee names no integration that lets an agent write to or act in outside systems.

SourceCognee, cognee.ai/pricing and docs.cognee.ai integrationsread 2026-09-21

Zep plugs into agent frameworks and exposes an agent tool for retrieving from a Context Graph, with webhooks notifying other systems of memory events and a Memory MCP Server for MCP clients. These connect Zep to agents, but Zep does not give agents authenticated read and write actions in outside systems.

SourceZep, help.getzep.com concepts and memory-for-agent-frameworksread 2026-09-21

Pipelines orchestrate Tasks into coordinated data processing workflows with a typed runtime context, and developers can build custom tasks and pipelines. They sequence the steps that build and enrich memory. Cognee names no control flow for the customer's own agent workflows.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai core-concepts/building-blocks/pipelines and guides/custom-tasks-pipelinesread 2026-09-21

Agents query Zep as a memory and context layer. Zep does not orchestrate agent workflows, sequencing or branching itself.

Sourcegetzep.comread 2026-09-21

Agents and applications call Cognee, a memory layer, through remember and recall. Cognee names no schedule, event or channel that starts an agent's work without a person or the calling application starting it.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai (full documentation export)read 2026-09-21

Webhooks fire on memory events. Zep has no agent invocation, scheduling or conversational channels of its own.

Sourcegetzep.comread 2026-09-21

Documents, code and application data, including Slack, Notion, Linear, Google Drive and GitHub sources, are ingested into three stores. A relational store holds documents, chunks and provenance, a vector store holds embeddings, and a knowledge graph holds entities and relationships. Recall queries them by vector, graph or hybrid retrieval, with provenance on answers and an optional context index for each dataset. The index and graph over the customer's knowledge persist and stay queryable.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai core-concepts/architecture and cognee.ai/pricingread 2026-09-21

Standalone Context Graphs store up to date knowledge about an object or system, separate from per user memory. Business data, JSON and document chunks are added with graph.add and grouped by document. Zep turns them into entities and temporal facts that are invalidated when superseded, and agents retrieve them with graph.search or as an agent tool. The graph over the customer's knowledge is maintained, persists, refreshes as new data arrives and stays queryable.

SourceZep, help.getzep.com/conceptsread 2026-09-21

Sessions are short term memory scoped to a user and session ID, holding recent queries, responses and the context used to answer them. Session distillation turns guidance stated in a session into permanent lessons that later recalls respect. User preferences adjust retrieval for each user and agent. Forget can reset only the memory state or delete one dataset without touching others.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai core-concepts/sessions-and-caching, guides/session-distillation and core-concepts/main-operations/forgetread 2026-09-21

Each application user has a user graph and thread history. Messages added to any of that user's threads are ingested into a temporal Context Graph of entities and facts. When new data supersedes a fact, Zep marks the time it became invalid, and it generates user summaries on the customer's instructions. Memory belongs to one user, and each fact carries the window of time in which it held true.

SourceZep, help.getzep.com/conceptsread 2026-09-21

A feedback system lets users rate answers to improve memory, and the permission system controls who can read and write datasets. Cognee names no approval step, consent checkpoint, escalation rule or pause for a person to sign off before an agent acts.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai guides/feedback-system and full documentation exportread 2026-09-21

The product stores and retrieves memory. It offers no human review, approval workflow or content guardrails.

Sourcegetzep.comread 2026-09-21

In multi user mode, Cognee enforces authentication and permissions scoped to each dataset through users, tenants, roles and access control lists, and each tenant's data sits in a dedicated database. Larger enterprise engagements add SSO. Cognee says it does not currently hold SOC 2, ISO 27001 or an equivalent third party certification.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai cognee-cloud/functionality/data-and-security and core-concepts/multi-user-mode/permissions-system/overviewread 2026-09-21

Controls and live status for Zep's SOC 2 Type II certification sit on its Trust Center. Enterprise adds a HIPAA BAA and a year of audit logs. Customers can bring their own encryption keys, and governance controls cover account management and agents' access to context. Some of these controls are available only on Enterprise.

SourceZep, getzep.com/pricing and help.getzep.com/conceptsread 2026-09-21

Agent session traces record what a decorated agent function did on each call, including calls that raised errors, and can be recalled later. Cognee emits OpenTelemetry spans and logs to an OTLP endpoint such as Langfuse, writes structured logs and visualizes memory provenance. The traces cover Cognee's own operations and the decorated call. Cognee names no step by step view of the agent's prompts, tool calls, retrieved knowledge and outputs.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai guides/agent-session-traces, setup-configuration/logging and integrations/opentelemetry-tracingread 2026-09-21

API logs are kept for a day on Flex, seven days on Flex Plus and a year on Enterprise. Enterprise adds audit logs and Flex Plus adds analytics. A time limited debug mode captures per episode workflow logs and reasoning traces for Zep's own ingestion steps. These logs cover calls to Zep and Zep's own processing, not the steps an agent took or the tools it called during a run.

SourceZep, getzep.com/pricing and help.getzep.com/conceptsread 2026-09-21

Customers can use managed Cognee Cloud or self host the open source software with Docker Compose, a Helm chart for Kubernetes, EC2 or Coolify. Cognee also runs fully locally with Ollama and embedded stores, and Enterprise customers can deploy it in their own cloud.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai how-to-guides/cognee-sdk/deployment and cognee.ai/pricingread 2026-09-21

Zep runs as a managed cloud, as the managed cloud with the customer's own encryption keys, or on Enterprise as a BYOC deployment inside the customer's own VPC on AWS, GCP or Azure. The open source Graphiti engine can also be self hosted.

SourceZep, getzep.com/pricing and github.com/getzep/graphitiread 2026-09-21

Examples and guides show how to build agents on Cognee's memory layer. Cognee names no catalog or set of ready made agents or templates for a customer to adopt.

SourceCognee, cognee.ai/pricing and docs.cognee.ai examples/overviewread 2026-09-21

Customers can configure custom entity and edge types and extraction instructions. Zep offers no prebuilt agents, templates or installable packs.

Sourcegetzep.comread 2026-09-21

The customer configures which LLM provider Cognee uses, from OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and Anthropic to local models through Ollama, and separately chooses the embedding provider, vector store and graph store.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai setup-configuration/llm-providers and embedding-providersread 2026-09-21

The open-source Graphiti engine behind Zep runs on the LLM and embedding providers and keys the customer configures, so the customer controls which model builds and queries the graph. Zep itself is not a model routing gateway.

SourceZep, github.com/getzep/graphiti and help.getzep.com Graphiti docs (indexed in llms.txt)read 2026-09-21

A REST API with an OpenAPI specification covers datasets, ingestion, recall and activity. Cognee also offers a Python API, a CLI and an MCP server for Cursor, Claude Code and other clients, and serve and push connect the SDK to Cognee Cloud or a remote instance.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai api-reference/introduction, python-api and cognee-mcp/mcp-overviewread 2026-09-21

Python, TypeScript and Go SDKs over Zep's API add messages and business data, search graphs and retrieve user context. A Memory MCP Server comes with seats per plan, webhooks are available, and the Graphiti engine is open source.

SourceZep, help.getzep.com concepts and sdk-reference, and getzep.com/pricingread 2026-09-21

Memory benchmarks published by Cognee measure its own engine. Cognee names no evaluation harness, scored test cases or quality gate a customer runs against its own agent.

SourceCognee, cognee.ai/pricing and docs.cognee.ai (full documentation export)read 2026-09-21

A research paper from Zep publishes memory retrieval benchmarks. Zep offers no product for customers to test, debug or optimize their agents.

Sourcearxiv.org/abs/2501.13956read 2026-09-21

Web URL ingestion fetches page content with custom extraction rules to build memory, so it builds the corpus and no agent operates a browser at run time. Cognee names no browser, desktop or computer control.

SourceCognee, docs.cognee.ai guides/web-url-ingestionread 2026-09-21

As a memory and knowledge graph layer, Zep provides no browser automation or computer use.

Sourcegetzep.comread 2026-09-21