Zep Community Edition is retired. Here is the self-hosted path.
Zep's repository now states that Community Edition is no longer supported and that its code has moved to a legacy/ folder. Zep's own route forward is Zep Cloud. If you ran Zep on your own servers, there are three ways ahead, and this page lays them side by side.
Reviewed October 2026
Three ways forward from Zep CE
legacy/Zep Cloudmanaged by Zep
Your app→Zep Cloud API
Graphitiopen-source library
Your app→Graphiti→Neo4j, FalkorDB or Neptune+LLM provider
Dakeraone container
Your app→Dakera, models included
Dashed box: a third-party API you configure. Zep Cloud and Graphiti details are from Zep's repositories and pricing page; Graphiti requires an LLM service and defaults to OpenAI.
| Zep Cloud | Graphiti (self-run) | Dakera | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | Zep | You | You |
| Also needed | Nothing to host | A graph database and an LLM API key | Nothing; embeddings, reranking and entity extraction run in the process |
| Per-use cost | Credits per episode: 1 credit per 350 bytes; storage and retrieval unmetered | Your LLM provider bills extraction | None beyond your own server |
| Licence | Proprietary service | Apache 2.0 | MIT SDKs, CLI and MCP server; proprietary server binary, no usage fees |
Zep Cloud also lists SOC 2 Type II on paid plans, a business associate agreement on Enterprise, and bring-your-own-key and bring-your-own-cloud options. Dakera keeps data on infrastructure you control, which simplifies data-residency and compliance reviews.
Time, two ways
Zep's strength is time. Graphiti tracks facts bi-temporally: each fact has a validity window, and a newer fact invalidates the one it supersedes. That is the right tool when your agent must answer "what was true in March?"
Dakera handles time at retrieval. Questions such as "what did we decide last week?" are understood as dates, and in v0.12.0 that works in seven languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch). Ranking includes a recency term, and six decay curves plus spaced-repetition TTL extension let unused memories fade while those in use stay sharp.
| Graphiti | Dakera | |
|---|---|---|
| Model of time | Validity windows on graph facts | Event dates in content, recency in the ranking score, decay and TTL over a memory's life |
| Query "two weeks ago" | Handled by your application and the LLM | Resolved by the server, including German, French, Spanish and more |
| Setting the shape of forgetting | Fact invalidation | Exponential, linear, step, power-law, logarithmic or flat decay per use case |
Bring your Zep data
Dakera imports Zep-format exports alongside Mem0, JSONL and CSV, so a trial does not start from an empty store. Each imported item is capped at 100,000 bytes of content.
# URL=http://localhost:3000, KEY=your key
curl -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
-F file=@zep-export.json \
"$URL/v1/import?agent_id=bot&format=zep"
# Follow the import job
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
"$URL/v1/import/<job_id>/status"What the self-hosted path looks like in v0.12.0
- No graph database to run. On-device entity extraction builds a knowledge graph with 5 edge types and BFS traversal. Edges are private to their agent by default.
- Air-gapped start. The 783 MB CPU image ships its default models and is ready about 4.4 s after start, with no download. Models and Docker
- Multilingual in one space. bge-m3 embeddings cover 100+ languages, with full-text stemming in 18.
- Security and operations. AES-256-GCM at rest once a key is configured, per-namespace key rotation, encrypted backups,
dakera --check-config, and multi-node high availability with replicated writes. - Take it back.
dakera downgradeconverts data to what v0.11.108 reads.
When to choose each
Choose Zep or Graphiti if
- Facts must carry explicit validity windows, so you can ask what was true at a past date.
- You want a managed service with SOC 2 Type II, a business associate agreement on Enterprise, BYOK or BYOC.
- You already run Neo4j, FalkorDB or Neptune and want Graphiti, under Apache 2.0, on top of it.
- Graph construction by an LLM is the quality you are buying.
Choose Dakera if
- You self-hosted Zep CE and want one container, not a graph database plus an LLM key.
- Memory text must not leave your infrastructure, or the host is air-gapped.
- You want recency, decay and multilingual date handling in retrieval, without a per-episode bill.
- You need SDKs in Python, TypeScript, Go and Rust, plus an MCP server for Claude Code and Cursor.
Prefer managed? Dakera Cloud is coming. Join the waitlist.
Frequently asked questions
Is Zep still open source?
Zep Community Edition is no longer supported and its code sits in the legacy/ folder of the Zep repository. Graphiti, Zep's graph library, is Apache 2.0, and Zep Cloud is a managed service.
Does self-hosted Graphiti need an LLM?
Yes. Graphiti's README lists an LLM service as a requirement, with OpenAI as the default provider and Anthropic, Gemini, Groq and OpenAI-compatible endpoints supported. It also needs Neo4j, FalkorDB or Neptune.
Can Dakera replace Zep CE?
For agent memory, yes: sessions, agents, namespaces, a knowledge graph, hybrid recall and an MCP server run from one container with no LLM key. Graphiti's validity windows are purpose-built for tracking how facts change, so choose it if that is the core requirement.
Can I move my Zep memories into Dakera?
Yes. POST /v1/import accepts format=zep, and the SDKs and the MCP server expose the same import.
What about a managed option?
Zep Cloud is managed today. Dakera Cloud is coming; join the waitlist.
Run Dakera on your own infrastructure.
One binary with its models baked in and no per-call fees. Start it with one Docker command and see it for yourself.
Prefer managed hosting? Join the Dakera Cloud waitlist →