GraphRAG Alternatives
Tools that give LLM apps long-term memory or graph-based retrieval, like GraphRAG. On GitHub, GraphRAG describes itself as: “A modular graph-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system”. Below are the 5 other open-source tools we track for the same job, ranked by live maintenance data from GitHub.
Short answer: Ranked by our health score from public GitHub data on 18 October 2026, the most actively maintained alternatives to GraphRAG are cognee (100), LightRAG (100) and Mem0 (92). GraphRAG’s README says the project is in maintenance mode (health score 25).
Should you switch from GraphRAG?
GraphRAG’s README says the project is in maintenance mode (health score 25). Full GraphRAG record
5 maintained alternatives to GraphRAG, ranked
| # | Tool | Status | Health | Commits, 91 days | Latest release | Licence | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | cogneeCognee is the open-source AI memory platform for agents. Give your AI agents persistent long-term memory with… | Active | 100 | 2,651 +107% | 16 Oct 2026 | Apache-2.0 | 32.5k |
| 2 | LightRAG[EMNLP2025] LightRAG: Simple and Fast Retrieval-Augmented Generation | Active | 100 | 1,950 +84% | 2 Sep 2026 | MIT | 40.2k |
| 3 | Mem0The Memory Layer for AI Agents - Drop-in memory infrastructure for AI agents and apps. Context that persists.… | Active | 92 | 183 +40% | 25 Sep 2026 | Apache-2.0 | 67.4k |
| 4 | GraphitiBuild Real-Time Knowledge Graphs for AI Agents | Active | 87 | 138 0% | 15 Oct 2026 | Apache-2.0 | 32.0k |
| 5 | LettaPlatform for stateful agents: AI with advanced memory that can learn and self-improve over time. | Slowing down | 42 | 9 −99% | 14 May 2026 | Apache-2.0 | 25.2k |
Ranked by status first, then health score (0 to 100). Commits are counted on each project’s default branch; the percentage compares with the same 91 days a year earlier. Stars are bookmarks, not users.
Compare and explore
GraphRAG alternatives: common questions
What is the best alternative to GraphRAG?
No single tool is best for every project. By maintenance signals on 18 October 2026, the highest-ranked actively maintained alternative is cognee (health score 100, 2,651 commits in the last 91 days). Compare features and the licence before you switch; we have not tested these tools ourselves.
Is GraphRAG still maintained?
Only in maintenance mode. The GraphRAG README says the project is no longer actively developed. It received 19 commits in the last 91 days (checked 18 October 2026). Its health score is 25 out of 100.
Which GraphRAG alternatives have a permissive licence?
Among the actively maintained alternatives, these use a permissive licence according to GitHub: cognee (Apache-2.0), LightRAG (MIT), Mem0 (Apache-2.0), Graphiti (Apache-2.0). Always read the licence file itself before commercial use.
How are these alternatives chosen and ranked?
We list the tools we track that do the same job as GraphRAG (Knowledge-graph RAG and agent memory). They are ranked by maintenance status first (active, slowing down, stopped) and by our health score second. The score combines commit activity, the trend against last year, the date of the last commit, the last release and merged pull requests, all from GitHub. It does not measure features, speed, quality or security.
How this works: we group tools by the job they do and rank the ones we track with public GitHub data (commits on the default branch, releases, merged pull requests, archived flag, and maintenance notices in the README), refreshed automatically. We have not tested these tools ourselves, so the ranking says how well each project is maintained, not which one has the features you need.