Vilix AI vs Smara: Which Shared Memory Layer Fits Your AI Tools?
Vilix AI vs Smara: Which Shared Memory Layer Fits Your AI Tools? The short answer: Vilix AI and Smara solve the same problem: your AI tools each start from zero. Both give every tool one shared memory instead. Pick Smara to self-host, for transparent per-memory pricing, or for a small team. Pick Vilix AI to cover many tools including headless agents, for full conversation history over extracted facts, with zero infrastructure. The honest tradeoff: Vilix AI is cloud-only; Smara ships a self-host
Vilix AI vs Smara: Which Shared Memory Layer Fits Your AI Tools?
The short answer: Vilix AI and Smara solve the same problem: your AI tools each start from zero. Both give every tool one shared memory instead. Pick Smara to self-host, for transparent per-memory pricing, or for a small team. Pick Vilix AI to cover many tools including headless agents, for full conversation history over extracted facts, with zero infrastructure. The honest tradeoff: Vilix AI is cloud-only; Smara ships a self-hostable open-source server.
What are Vilix AI and Smara?
A shared memory layer is a single store of your AI conversations, decisions, and rules that every connected AI tool reads from and writes to. You brief one tool once; the rest pull from the same memory instead of starting from zero.
Smara (smara.io) is a memory API for AI agents: discrete memories with semantic search, Ebbinghaus-style decay scoring, and contradiction detection. MIT-licensed and self-hostable. Integrates with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf over MCP, plus Python SDKs for CrewAI and LangChain.
Vilix AI is a hosted shared memory and work-state layer across MCP clients, tied to one account. Full conversation exchanges plus projects, tasks, rules, and reusable agent skills, connecting many tools, including headless agents like Hermes and OpenClaw over a plain API key.
Head-to-head comparison
| Vilix AI | Smara | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Shared memory and work-state layer across MCP clients, one account | Memory API for AI agents: semantic search, decay scoring, knowledge graphs |
| Hosting | Cloud only, you manage nothing | Hosted cloud, or self-hosted (MIT open source, Docker Compose) |
| How tools connect | OAuth, or API key as Bearer header to https://api.vilix.ai/mcp |
MCP server package (@smara/mcp-server), Python SDKs, or REST API |
| Tool coverage | Claude, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes, Grok, Manus AI, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Lovable, Muse, any MCP-compatible AI | Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf via MCP; CrewAI and LangChain via Python SDKs; Paperclip plugin; OpenAI/Codex via REST |
| What gets stored | Full conversation exchanges with source metadata, derived memories, projects, tasks, rules, reusable skills, agent inbox | Discrete memory units (facts); teams and custom skills on paid tiers |
| Retrieval | Semantic plus keyword search; recency-aware, so the newest version is what the AI sees | Semantic search ranked by relevance times Ebbinghaus decay; reinforced on access |
| Conflict handling | Last write wins, stated publicly: correct something once and every tool sees the update | Contradiction detection at write time (returns "replaced" on conflicting facts) |
| Work state | Projects, tasks, rules, skills, and an agent inbox alongside memory, editable from any connected AI or the dashboard | Not its model; it is a memory store, not a task system |
| Dashboard | app.vilix.ai: list, update, and delete everything | API playground and docs |
| Data portability | Export everything in a portable format anytime; delete individual memories or wipe the account instantly | Not verified from the sources I read; check their docs |
| Free tier | Free plan (limited) | $0: 10,000 memories, 1 team / 3 members, 2 agents |
| Paid tiers | Starter $10/mo or $100/yr; Pro $20/mo or $200/yr; Power $49/mo or $469/yr. 7-day Pro trial, no credit card | Developer $19/mo (200,000 memories); Pro $99/mo (2,000,000 memories) |
Smara facts: smara-io/smara README and smara.io, read 2026-09-26. Vilix AI facts: product truth sheet. Prices change; verify both pricing pages.
Where Smara is stronger
- Self-hosting. Smara is MIT-licensed with a Docker Compose setup. If your data cannot leave your hardware, that is decisive, and no cloud-only tool can argue with it.
- Quantified pricing. You know exactly what you get: 10,000 memories free, 200,000 on Developer. Vilix AI's free plan is "limited" with no published number.
- Developer API ergonomics. Three REST endpoints, Python SDKs for CrewAI and LangChain, contradiction handling at write time. If your agent stack is already CrewAI or LangChain and you want memory as a native SDK call, Smara speaks your language.
Where Vilix AI is stronger
- Full conversations, not just extracted facts. Vilix AI stores the actual exchanges, so the reasoning and dead ends behind a decision survive. Smara stores discrete facts: cleaner, but lossier.
- Memory plus work state: projects, tasks, rules, reusable agent skills, an agent inbox, editable from any connected tool or the dashboard.
- Widest tool coverage, including headless agents. Vilix AI also connects headless agents like Hermes and OpenClaw over a plain API key, so scheduled runs share memory with your interactive sessions.
- Conflict handling is stated, not implied. Last write wins, stated publicly: correct something once and every tool sees the update.
The honest tradeoff
Vilix AI is cloud-only: no self-host option, no open-source server. If data residency or self-hosting is a hard requirement, Smara wins outright.
The counterweight: your data is portable. Export everything in a portable format anytime, delete individual memories or wipe the account instantly, with per-user isolation and no training of third-party models on your memory. Portability is not the same as self-hosting, so weigh it accordingly.
A second tradeoff: each AI client needs its own one-time setup. That is a deliberate security choice, but connecting five tools means five small setups.
And one for Smara's side: self-hosting is real but it is not free. The Docker setup needs PostgreSQL 15+ with pgvector and a Voyage AI key for embeddings. Price your own ops time against the $19/mo hosted tier before romanticizing it.
Which should you pick?
- Pick Smara if you must self-host, want exact per-memory pricing math, or your agent stack is CrewAI or LangChain and you want the memory SDK native to it.
- Pick Vilix AI if you bounce between many AI tools (including agents that run while you sleep), want full conversation history instead of extracted facts, would rather manage zero infrastructure, or you are building an agent and want its memory as a hosted service over MCP instead of code you operate.
- Run both free tiers if you are unsure. A week of real usage beats any comparison page. For background, start with what a shared memory layer actually is.
FAQ
Is Smara really open source? Yes. The smara-io/smara repository is MIT-licensed, with a self-hostable API server via Docker Compose. Vilix AI is cloud-only.
Which is cheaper? They meter differently. Smara Developer is $19/mo for 200,000 memories; Vilix AI Starter is $10/mo and Pro is $20/mo with a 7-day trial. Smara's free tier is quantified (10,000 memories); Vilix AI's free plan is "limited" without a published number. Re-check both pricing pages; prices change.
Do they work with the same tools? Largely. Both cover Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and Codex. Vilix AI adds OpenClaw, Hermes, Grok, Manus AI, GitHub Copilot, Lovable, Muse, and any MCP-compatible AI; Smara adds CrewAI and LangChain SDKs.
What happens to my data if I cancel Vilix AI? Export everything in a portable format anytime, delete individual memories, or wipe the account instantly. Per-user data isolation; no training third-party models on your memory. For Smara's data controls, check their docs.
Why should I trust this comparison? You shouldn't, blindly: it is written by someone who builds Vilix AI. Verify the Smara column against smara.io and their GitHub README, and run both free tiers before paying.