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Letta vs LightRAG

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted self-hosted ai options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
LE Letta Build stateful LLM agents with long-term memory VS LI LightRAG Simple and fast retrieval-augmented generation with graphs
FeatureLettaLightRAG
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setup≈5-minute setup
Health score96 · Excellent99 · Excellent
CategorySelf-Hosted AISelf-Hosted AI
LicenseApache-2.0MIT
LanguagePythonPython
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM2,048 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, sourcedocker, source
GitHub stars★ 24,864★ 39,836
First released20232024
ReplacesOpenAI AssistantsOpenAI Assistants

What are Letta and LightRAG?

Letta

Letta, formerly known as MemGPT, is an open-source framework for building LLM agents with persistent memory and advanced reasoning. It provides a server, agent development kit, and visual interface for creating stateful assistants.

  • Persistent agent memory
  • Self-editing context
  • Agent Development Kit
  • Visual agent editor

Read the full Letta guide →

LightRAG

LightRAG is a retrieval-augmented generation system that combines knowledge graphs with vector retrieval for more accurate answers over document collections. It offers a server and API and can be fully self-hosted.

  • Graph-based retrieval
  • Fast indexing
  • REST API and server
  • Multi-model support

Read the full LightRAG guide →

Letta vs LightRAG: key differences

Both projects are written in Python. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Letta versus MIT for LightRAG.

Why pick each one

Choose Letta if…

  • Persistent agent memory
  • Visual agent builder
  • Model-agnostic design

Watch out for

  • Concept-heavy
  • Best with capable models
Letta details

Choose LightRAG if…

  • Graph-enhanced retrieval
  • Simple API server
  • Multiple storage backends

Watch out for

  • Indexing is LLM-heavy
  • Fast-moving young project
LightRAG details

Frequently asked questions

Is Letta or LightRAG better?

Neither is universally better. LightRAG has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Letta and LightRAG free and open-source?

Yes. Letta is licensed under Apache-2.0 and LightRAG under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Letta and LightRAG with Docker?

Letta: yes. LightRAG: yes.

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