Mem0 Pricing & Free Tier Limits (2026): Plans, the Retrieval-Call Ceiling, Zep & Letta Cost

Mem0's free tier looks generous - 10,000 memory-add requests a month for $0 - but it hides the number that actually gates you: 1,000 retrieval requests. Mem0 bills per request, and it counts adds and retrievals as two separate quotas. A production agent reads its memory on almost every turn, so the retrieval quota (about 33 calls a day on the free tier) runs out long before the storage does. Here are the exact 2026 plans, the request-metering gotcha, and how Zep and Letta compare on cost.

Mem0 pricing in 2026

Mem0 Platform is priced per request - memory add requests and memory retrieval requests are metered separately - not per stored memory and not per user (end users are unlimited on every tier).

• Free, $0/mo: 10,000 memory adds, 1,000 retrieval requests, 1 project, community support.
• Starter, $19/mo: 50,000 memory adds, 5,000 retrieval requests, 1 project.
• Growth, $79/mo: 200,000 memory adds, 20,000 retrieval requests, 3 projects, and Pro graph memory (entity linking).
• Pro, $249/mo: 500,000 memory adds, 50,000 retrieval requests, unlimited projects, advanced analytics, graph memory.
• Custom: usage-based pricing with SLA and enterprise support.

The one you'll actually hit: retrieval requests

The trap is that "10,000 memories" sounds like the limit, so people plan against storage. But Mem0 meters requests, and the two request types have very different ceilings. On the free tier you get 10,000 adds but only 1,000 retrievals - a 10:1 gap. Every time your agent searches its memory to build context, that is a retrieval request. An agent that recalls on each turn of a conversation burns retrievals fast: 1,000 a month is about 33 a day, which one moderately chatty user can exhaust alone.

So estimate by retrieval calls per agent turn, not by how many facts you store. If your agent reads memory more than it writes it - which is the normal shape - retrievals are the meter that moves you off the free tier, and the $19 Starter plan (5,000 retrievals) is the first real step. One more gate: graph memory (entity linking) is locked to the $79 Growth plan and up, so relational recall is not a free-tier feature.

How Mem0 compares on cost: Zep and Letta

The three popular managed memory options meter completely differently, so a head-to-head price is misleading until you normalize by how each one counts.

• Mem0 is a vector-first memory layer you bolt onto any stack, metered per add and retrieval request (above).
• Zep is a temporal knowledge graph (Graphiti) and meters in credits - reportedly about 1,000 free credits a month, then a Flex plan around $25/mo for roughly 20,000 credits. Credits are consumed per operation, so a graph write costs more than a simple read.
• Letta is a full agent runtime where the model pages its own memory; its managed pricing bundles hosting plus runtime usage, not just memory, so it is not comparable to a pure memory API.

For an architecture-level breakdown of when each fits, see the Letta vs Mem0 vs Graphiti vs Cognee comparison and how the MCP memory servers compare on trust model. This page is about the bill; those are about the design.

What changed in 2026

Mem0 moved to the clean per-request Platform pricing above and gated graph memory to the $79 Growth tier. The free tier stayed generous on adds (10,000) but the 1,000-retrieval ceiling is the number to plan against, and it is easy to miss because the marketing leads with the memory count, not the retrieval count.

When the free tier is enough - and the inspectable alternative

If you are shipping a chat agent with modest recall volume and you just want memory to work, Mem0's free tier is a fine place to start. Two cases push the other way. First, if retrieval-heavy metering makes your bill unpredictable, a memory layer with flat, predictable pricing is easier to reason about. Second, and more fundamental: Mem0's managed model is "we hold the memory, trust us with it" - you cannot easily list, audit, or correct what it decided to store.

Memnode is the alternative built for that gap: inspectable memory with provenance and correction chains, a local MCP server plus a hosted API, a Rust data plane, and predictable pricing on the hosted side. If you need to debug what your agent actually believes - or you are in a regulated workflow that needs an audit trail - the trust model matters more than the per-request rate. And the interface is not the whole story: an MCP memory server is not enough on its own; the backend still decides whether recall is right.

Frequently asked

Is Mem0's free tier enough for production?

For a low-recall or prototype agent, yes. The limit you hit first is 1,000 retrieval requests a month (about 33 a day), not the 10,000 memory adds - so a read-heavy production agent will need at least the $19 Starter plan (5,000 retrievals).

How does Mem0 count usage?

Per request, with memory adds and retrievals metered as separate quotas. End users are unlimited on every tier; you are billed on how often the agent writes and reads memory, not on how many users you have or how many facts are stored.

Is graph memory free on Mem0?

No. Pro graph memory (entity linking) starts on the $79 Growth plan; the Free and $19 Starter tiers are vector memory only.

Mem0 vs Zep pricing, which is cheaper?

They meter differently: Mem0 by add and retrieval requests, Zep by credits. Mem0 tends to be simpler to reason about for pure recall; Zep's credit model fits temporal-graph workloads. Normalize by your own read/write mix before comparing headline prices, and check both official pricing pages for current numbers.

The authoritative, live figures are on the official Mem0 pricing page and Zep pricing page; the numbers here reflect the published 2026 plans.