COMPARISON.md

How Compartment compares

What each project documents about where memory lives and what protects it, checked against its own source or docs on 2 September 2026. "Not documented" means the project's README and docs do not describe the property; it is not a claim about undocumented behaviour. Corrections are welcome as a PR against this file.

	Memory at rest	Encrypted at rest	Account or API key	Network at runtime	License
Compartment	one AEAD-sealed vault file, index in RAM	yes, vectors included	none	none; a runtime guard aborts on any socket, enforced in CI on three OSes	Apache-2.0
Claude Code built-in memory	Markdown under ~/.claude and per project	not documented	none	none	proprietary host
Hermes Agent built-in memory	MEMORY.md (2,200 chars) + USER.md (1,375 chars), injected whole at session start [1]	not documented	none	none	MIT
OpenClaw built-in memory	MEMORY.md + daily memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md logs [2]	not documented	embedding provider for search	embedding calls	MIT
@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory	plaintext memory.jsonl inside the installed package directory; search is case-insensitive substring match [3]	no	none	none	MIT
mem0 (open source)	vector store + facts extracted by an LLM; the Mem0 MCP server itself is hosted only [6]	not documented	an LLM key (OpenAI by default; local models configurable)	LLM calls per store; usage telemetry on by default [4]	Apache-2.0
Graphiti (Zep)	Neo4j graph	not documented	an LLM key	LLM calls; usage telemetry on by default [7]	Apache-2.0
Letta Code	server + database; defaults to Letta's cloud API	not documented	an LLM key	LLM calls; usage telemetry on by default [8]	Apache-2.0
claude-mem	local SQLite + Chroma	not documented	sign-in required (email magic link), subscription after a trial for the hosted observer [5]	account + provider calls; usage telemetry on by default [9]	Apache-2.0
basic-memory	Markdown files + SQLite index	not documented	none locally	usage telemetry to Umami on by default, opt-out [10]	AGPL-3.0
Hindsight (Vectorize)	one container with embedded PostgreSQL	not documented	an LLM key (local models configurable)	LLM calls; vendor states no telemetry	MIT
Supermemory	cloud service, or a self-hosted prebuilt binary (the server source is not in the repository)	not documented for self-host; the cloud states AES-256 class encryption	an account (cloud) or an LLM key (self-host)	cloud calls; the vendor states the self-hosted binary sends no analytics [11]	MIT (repository)
Cognee	SQLite + LanceDB + Kuzu locally by default, or cloud	not documented	an LLM key (LLM_API_KEY is step two of the README)	LLM calls; usage telemetry on unless TELEMETRY_DISABLED is set [12]	Apache-2.0
MemOS	Neo4j + Qdrant when self-hosted, or MemOS Cloud; a local plugin uses SQLite	not documented	an LLM key	LLM calls; the local plugin ships telemetry: { enabled: true } [13]	Apache-2.0

Sources

1. Hermes Agent docs, Memory: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/features/memory
2. OpenClaw docs, Memory: https://open-claw.bot/docs/concepts/memory/
3. src/memory/index.ts in modelcontextprotocol/servers: defaultMemoryPath = path.join(path.dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url)), 'memory.jsonl'); searchNodes filters with toLowerCase().includes(...). https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/blob/main/src/memory/index.ts
4. mem0/memory/telemetry.py: MEM0_TELEMETRY = os.environ.get("MEM0_TELEMETRY", "True"), events sent to https://us.i.posthog.com with a project key in the source. https://github.com/mem0ai/mem0/blob/main/mem0/memory/telemetry.py
5. claude-mem README, Quick start: "asks you to sign in to claude-mem in your browser (email magic link ...) ... When the free trial ends, memory automatically falls back to your Anthropic plan unless you subscribe." https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem
6. Mem0 docs, Mem0 MCP: "Nothing runs on your machine: the server is hosted by Mem0, and your client connects to it over HTTPS. Memories you store this way live in your Mem0 account, not on your computer." https://docs.mem0.ai/platform/mem0-mcp
7. Graphiti README, Telemetry: "Telemetry is opt-out"; graphiti_core/telemetry/telemetry.py defaults GRAPHITI_TELEMETRY_ENABLED to 'true' and posts to PostHog. https://github.com/getzep/graphiti#telemetry
8. letta-code src/telemetry/index.ts: "Enabled by default unless explicitly disabled" (LETTA_CODE_TELEM, DO_NOT_TRACK). https://github.com/letta-ai/letta-code/blob/main/src/telemetry/index.ts
9. claude-mem src/services/telemetry/consent.ts: "Default: on (opt-out — anonymous events only)". https://github.com/thedotmack/claude-mem/blob/main/src/services/telemetry/consent.ts
10. basic-memory README, Telemetry: events go to Umami Cloud; BASIC_MEMORY_NO_PROMOS defaults to false and "disables promos and all telemetry". https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memory#telemetry
11. Supermemory docs, Self-Hosting Configuration, section Telemetry: the self-hosted binary sends no analytics. https://supermemory.ai/docs/self-hosting/configuration#telemetry
12. cognee/shared/utils.py: events are posted to https://test.prometh.ai unless TELEMETRY_DISABLED is set in the environment. https://github.com/topoteretes/cognee/blob/main/cognee/shared/utils.py
13. apps/memos-local-plugin/core/config/defaults.ts: telemetry: { enabled: true }; the README's self-host path is docker compose up with Neo4j and Qdrant. https://github.com/MemTensor/MemOS/blob/main/apps/memos-local-plugin/core/config/defaults.ts

What the table does not say

• A source-level audit of about twenty-five open-source memory stores on 2 September 2026 found none that encrypt memories at rest; the only encryption in any of them protects credentials such as database passwords or OAuth tokens.

• Every project above is useful and several are far larger than Compartment. A Markdown file is the right memory for a lot of people; see the README.

• "Not documented" is the honest cell for a property nobody claims. If a project encrypts its store and we missed it, open a PR.

• Embedding vectors are not anonymous: text can be substantially reconstructed from its embedding (Morris et al., Text Embeddings Reveal (Almost) As Much As Text, 2023, https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06816). That is why Compartment encrypts the vectors, not only the text.