What is Zep?
Zep is a hosted memory service for AI agents. You send it chat messages, JSON or text, which Zep calls episodes; it extracts entities and facts into a knowledge graph in which each fact records when it became true and when it stopped being true, so the agent can tell what is current and what used to be. A search returns the relevant facts, entities, episodes and summaries as a block of context for your prompt.
The graph is built by Graphiti, Zep's open-source framework, and stored in Konig, Zep's own graph database. On top of that Zep adds users and threads, a dashboard, connectors, custom entity types, and Agent Skills, which turns completed agent tasks into instructions agents follow next time. Zep now markets the whole as an enterprise context layer.
Zep ended its self-hosted Community Edition in April 2025. Running it yourself now means either Graphiti with your own graph database or an Enterprise contract that deploys Zep inside your own cloud.
How much does Zep cost?
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10,000 credits a month, lower-priority processing |
| Flex | $125/month | 50,000 credits, $25 per extra 10,000, 600 requests a minute |
| Flex Plus | $375/month | 200,000 credits, $75 per extra 40,000, webhooks, custom extraction |
| Enterprise | Custom | BYOC, BYOK, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA |
Billed in credits: one credit per episode of up to 350 bytes, retrieval and storage free. Free $0 with 10,000 credits a month; Flex $125/month with 50,000 credits and $25 per extra 10,000; Flex Plus $375/month with 200,000 credits and $75 per extra 40,000; Enterprise custom (BYOC, SOC 2 Type II report, HIPAA BAA).
Is Zep worth it?
A customer tells your agent in March that they moved to Leeds, and in June it still books deliveries to their old address in York, because both facts sit in memory and nothing says which one is newer.
Zep is built for exactly that. Every fact it extracts carries the date it became true and, once contradicted, the date it stopped, so the agent can answer what is true now and what was true last quarter. It runs on Graphiti, the open-source engine we rate 4.3, and adds what Graphiti leaves to you: a managed graph database, user and thread management, access control, a dashboard and support.
Retrieval is quick and costs nothing. Searches need no LLM call, and Zep's own benchmark page reports 90.2% on LongMemEval and 94.7% on LoCoMo, with p50 and p95 retrieval of 104 and 162 ms on LongMemEval, using gpt-5.4 to answer and to judge. Other vendors' tables tell a different story: Supermemory's research page lists Zep at 71.2% on LongMemEval from an older GPT-4o run. The spread is a reminder that every memory benchmark here is run by an interested party.
The catch: the bill follows what you store, measured in bytes. One credit covers an episode of up to 350 bytes, about a short paragraph, so a 1,200-byte message costs four. Flex at $125 a month buys 50,000 credits, with $25 for each extra 10,000, and Flex keeps API logs for one day. SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA BAAs are listed only for Enterprise, as are BYOC and your own encryption keys. The site does not publish how long stored memories are kept.
The self-hosting route has narrowed too. Zep stopped maintaining its Community Edition in April 2025, so the only open-source option is Graphiti with Neo4j, FalkorDB or Neptune and your own extraction model, tenancy and authentication.
Our take: Zep is Graphiti with the hard parts done for you. When your team would rather pay $125 a month than run a graph database, that is a fair trade; when your messages are long and frequent, price the bytes first.
Where it earns its place
A customer experience team at an online retailer with 40,000 active customers
Make the support agent use each customer's current address, plan and open orders
Send each support message as an episode under the customer's user ID; superseded facts are marked invalid, so the agent quotes the current address. Short chat messages cost one credit each, so 50,000 messages a month fits Flex at $125.
A health-tech start-up handling patient conversations
Add memory to a care assistant while meeting HIPAA rules
HIPAA BAAs, SOC 2 Type II and your own encryption keys are Enterprise-only, priced by quote. Until that contract is signed, the alternative is self-hosting Graphiti inside your own network.
An engineering manager comparing build and buy for agent memory
Decide between Zep and running Graphiti in-house
Graphiti is free but needs Neo4j or FalkorDB, an extraction LLM and your own access control. Zep's Flex at $125 a month for 50,000 credits removes that work; at high write volume, $25 per 10,000 extra credits can exceed the cost of a graph server.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Sign up, create a project and key, then pip install zep-cloud or npm install @getzep/zep-cloud; adding a user, a thread and messages and calling for context takes a few lines. A bulk ingestion tool, zep-ingest, loads Slack, documents, email and CSV.
- Integrations
- Python, TypeScript and Go SDKs; an MCP server; packages for Google ADK, Microsoft Agent Framework, AutoGen, AG2, CrewAI, LangGraph, LiveKit, Pydantic AI, Strands, Mastra and Vercel AI SDK; Enterprise connectors for Teams, SharePoint, Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery.
- Data and privacy
- Data is stored on Zep's cloud; API logs are kept 1 day on Flex, 7 days on Flex Plus and 1 year on Enterprise. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAAs, an EU DPA, BYOK and BYOC are listed for Enterprise. Retention of stored memories and training use are not published on the pricing page.
- Cost at scale
- Flex: $125 a month for 50,000 credits, then $25 per 10,000; Flex Plus: $375 for 200,000, then $75 per 40,000. Storage and retrieval are free, so cost scales with the bytes you write, not with how often the agent reads.
- Limits
- 600 requests a minute on Flex and 1,000 on Flex Plus, lowered under heavy load; Free has no top-up and lower-priority processing; custom entity types capped at 5 to 20 by plan.
What’s good
- Facts carry valid-from and valid-to dates
- Retrieval is free and fast, with no LLM call per search
- Managed graph storage, users, threads and dashboard
- SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAA and BYOC available on Enterprise
- Integrations for LangGraph, CrewAI, Google ADK, Mastra and more
What’s not
- Billed per 350 bytes stored, so long messages get expensive
- Self-hosted Community Edition ended in April 2025
- Compliance features and BYOC only on Enterprise
- Free tier has variable rate limits and lower priority
- Memory retention period not published
Best for
Teams building long-running agents that must track changing facts about customers and would rather pay for a managed graph than run one.
Zep alternatives
Zep: common questions
- Is Zep worth it?
- Zep is the safest hosted pick when your agent must know which facts are current and you want fast, free retrieval, but you pay per message stored and you can no longer run Zep itself without an Enterprise deal. We rate it 4.1 out of 5.
- How much does Zep cost?
- Billed in credits: one credit per episode of up to 350 bytes, retrieval and storage free. Free $0 with 10,000 credits a month; Flex $125/month with 50,000 credits and $25 per extra 10,000; Flex Plus $375/month with 200,000 credits and $75 per extra 40,000; Enterprise custom (BYOC, SOC 2 Type II report, HIPAA BAA).
- What are the downsides of Zep?
- Billed per 350 bytes stored, so long messages get expensive; self-hosted Community Edition ended in April 2025; compliance features and BYOC only on Enterprise; free tier has variable rate limits and lower priority; memory retention period not published.
- Who is Zep best for?
- Teams building long-running agents that must track changing facts about customers and would rather pay for a managed graph than run one.
- How much does Zep cost for a team or in production?
- Flex: $125 a month for 50,000 credits, then $25 per 10,000; Flex Plus: $375 for 200,000, then $75 per 40,000. Storage and retrieval are free, so cost scales with the bytes you write, not with how often the agent reads.
- Is Zep safe for company data?
- Data is stored on Zep's cloud; API logs are kept 1 day on Flex, 7 days on Flex Plus and 1 year on Enterprise. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA BAAs, an EU DPA, BYOK and BYOC are listed for Enterprise. Retention of stored memories and training use are not published on the pricing page.
- What are the best Zep alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Supermemory.
Answers checked Nov 6, 2026.
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