Mem0 vs Zep: the honest comparison
The short answer
Edition v2026.Q3 · pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.
Choose Mem0 for adding 'remembers the user' to an existing app in an afternoon — a hosted extraction-and-retrieval API that works with any model and framework. Choose Zep for enterprises whose agents must remember evolving business facts — temporal knowledge graphs over chat plus CRM/app data, with provenance tracking and access control.
On the elems table, Mem0 holds seat #1 of the Memory Layer element and Zep holds #2 — this is the closest call in the category, and the honest answer depends on which trade-off you can live with.
The case for each
1Mem0Mem0 (YC S24)
Hobby free (10k adds/mo) · Starter $19/mo · Pro $249/mo · Enterprise custom (on-prem, SSO)Best for Adding 'remembers the user' to an existing app in an afternoon — a hosted extraction-and-retrieval API that works with any model and framework.
Watch Its 'SOTA' LoCoMo claims are disputed — Zep published a rebuttal showing a corrected implementation beat Mem0's setup, and Mem0's own paper had a full-context baseline outperforming it. Retrieval quotas bite: 1k retrievals/mo free and 5k on the $19 tier push retrieval-heavy apps to $249 quickly.
2ZepZep AI
Free 10k credits/mo · Flex $1,250/yr · Flex Plus $3,750/yr · Emerging Cos $13k/first year (SOC 2, HIPAA BAA) · Enterprise customBest for Enterprises whose agents must remember evolving business facts — temporal knowledge graphs over chat plus CRM/app data, with provenance tracking and access control.
Watch No cheap paid tier — the jump from free to $1,250/yr excludes hobbyists, and the self-hosted Community Edition was deprecated (code moved to legacy/), so the real product is cloud-only. Its 94.7% LoCoMo / 90.2% LongMemEval numbers are vendor-run, like everyone else's.
Mem0 vs Zep: side by side
Edition v2026.Q3 · verified 2026-08-06.
| Mem0 | Zep | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Extract + consolidate API, opt. graph | Temporal knowledge graph |
| Open source | Yes (Apache, 61.7k★) | Graphiti only (29k★) |
| Hosted entry price | Free · $19/mo | Free · $1,250/yr |
| Self-host | Yes (OSS) | No (CE deprecated) |
| Latency claim | 70x vector-search cut (Jul 2026) | sub-200ms at 100M graphs |
| Compliance | SOC 2 I, HIPAA-ready | SOC 2 II, HIPAA BAA |
| MCP / plugins | OpenMemory MCP, Claude Code | SSO-gated memory MCP |
What each side won't tell you
Mem0: Its 'SOTA' LoCoMo claims are disputed — Zep published a rebuttal showing a corrected implementation beat Mem0's setup, and Mem0's own paper had a full-context baseline outperforming it. Retrieval quotas bite: 1k retrievals/mo free and 5k on the $19 tier push retrieval-heavy apps to $249 quickly.
Zep: No cheap paid tier — the jump from free to $1,250/yr excludes hobbyists, and the self-hosted Community Edition was deprecated (code moved to legacy/), so the real product is cloud-only. Its 94.7% LoCoMo / 90.2% LongMemEval numbers are vendor-run, like everyone else's.
If it's neither
The rest of the top five: Letta (memory-first agent harness) · Supermemory (fast cheap context cloud) · Cognee (open-source graph memory). The complete field — 19 more tools including the graveyard — is on the element page.
This analysis is drawn from the Memory Layer element dossier — the ranked top 5, the comparison matrix, and the complete field of 19 more tools live there, with every source. Data: mm.json (CC BY 4.0).
Every claim above is dated and sourced from the elems dossiers — 1,421 tools tracked across 58 categories, verified 2026-08-06, including the 276 we found dead, renamed, acquired, or sunsetting. Rankings are editorial, never paid — the charter.
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