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Cognee vs LlamaIndex

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Entry price
Cognee from $2.50/credit, LlamaIndex from $50/mo — different billing units, so no direct winner
Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Both have one
Best fit
Cognee: Developers building agents that need recall across sessions · LlamaIndex: Developers building retrieval-augmented answers over PDFs, contracts and reports with tables and scans
Platforms
Cognee: Web · LlamaIndex: Web, Linux

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

CogneeTurns documents and past sessions into a graph-plus-vector memory that AI agents can query across runs.LlamaIndexOpen-source data framework for retrieval and agents, with LlamaParse as the paid document parsing, extraction and indexing service

Side by side

FactCogneeLlamaIndex
CategoryVector Databases & RAGAgent Frameworks & Orchestration
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$2.50/credit$50/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score83 / 10087 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIAPI, Web, Linux
CompanyTopoteretes UG (haftungsbeschränkt)LlamaIndex, Inc.
Launched20242023
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Cognee

Cognee's bet is that plain vector search loses the relationships between facts, so it builds a graph on top and lets agents traverse it. Being open source means you can run the whole thing locally and pay only if you want the hosted version, which is the right shape for infrastructure. The catch is that graph construction costs tokens, so a large corpus is not cheap, and you are wiring a library rather than clicking through a product.

Pros

  • Open-source Python SDK you can run entirely on your own machines
  • Builds a knowledge graph alongside embeddings instead of only vectors
  • MCP server plus integrations for Claude Code, Codex and LangGraph
  • Free tier and pay-per-token pricing rather than a seat licence

Cons

  • Ingesting a large corpus burns tokens, and 2.50 dollars per million adds up
  • It is a library first, so expect to write code rather than configure a dashboard
  • Workspaces are billed separately at 5 dollars each beyond the first

LlamaIndex

LlamaIndex is the pragmatic choice for a developer who wants retrieval over messy documents working this week: the open-source framework handles ingestion and querying, and LlamaParse does the hard part — tables, scans and layouts — as a paid API with a free tier large enough to prototype on. Teams that only need to chain model calls will find LangChain's ecosystem broader, and anyone parsing millions of pages should model the credit cost before committing, because agentic parsing multiplies the per-page rate.

Pros

  • Open-source framework with commercial-friendly licensing and connectors for most file and data sources
  • LlamaParse handles tables, multi-column layouts and scanned pages that plain text extractors mangle
  • Free tier of 10,000 credits a month and a $50 Starter plan make the cost curve gentle at the start
  • Enterprise options include private VPC and hybrid deployment, SSO and custom BAAs

Cons

  • Credit pricing is opaque until you test: basic pages cost one credit, agentic and VLM parsing cost several times more
  • The free tier allows file upload only, so connectors and external sources need a paid plan
  • Rapid API and library changes mean tutorials and integrations go stale quickly
  • Index limits (5 indexes, 50 files each on Free) are tight for anything beyond a demo

Which one fits

Choose Cognee if you need

  • Developers building agents that need recall across sessions
  • Teams whose data has structure that flat embeddings lose
  • Anyone who wants to self-host the memory layer rather than rent it

Choose LlamaIndex if you need

  • Developers building retrieval-augmented answers over PDFs, contracts and reports with tables and scans
  • Teams that want extraction of structured fields from documents without training their own layout models
  • Startups prototyping on the free tier and growing into metered usage rather than a seat licence

Cognee vs LlamaIndex: the questions people ask

Is Cognee cheaper than LlamaIndex?

They charge in different units, so there is no like-for-like answer: Cognee starts at $2.50/credit, LlamaIndex at $50/mo. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it.

Does Cognee or LlamaIndex have a free tier?

Both: Cognee has a free tier, and LlamaIndex has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Cognee or LlamaIndex?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

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