AI memory comparison
Tephra vs Claude memory
Claude memory is built into Claude, with per-project memory spaces, a per-chat switch and incognito chats, and it needs no setup, and Claude can also move memory by pasted text, with an import path its help pages call experimental. Claude keeps each project's memory deliberately separate, while Tephra keeps one memory across every connected app; which is better depends on whether you want separation or continuity. Tephra is a separate hosted memory that Claude and other MCP apps can connect to. If you work only in Claude, its built-in memory may be enough. If you also use other AI apps or several Claude accounts, a shared memory addresses a different problem.
Sources read and prices checked 2026-10-10.
Obsidian Metrics makes Tephra and Tracker, the two products this page compares against others. This page is written by the maker of one of the products compared, so read the competitor columns against their own pages, linked below each table. Competitor facts come only from the vendor pages listed under Sources, read on the date shown above; vendors change plans and prices without notice. We are not affiliated with any company named here, and all product names belong to their owners.
Tephra and Claude memory side by side
| Feature | Tephra | Claude memory |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hosted memory your connected AI apps share: they recall from it and write to it over MCP or REST. | A feature inside Claude that saves memory as a set of individual topics as you chat, with a separate memory space and dedicated summary for each project. [1] |
| Entry price | Tephra needs a paid plan: Premium at $19 a month in the Obsidian Metrics Skool community or $29 a month direct, or a $399 one-time seat. No free tier. | Memory is on by default for Free, Pro and Max plans. Team and Enterprise owners decide whether it is available, and it is off for each member until they turn it on. Anthropic states memory is not available to organisations with HIPAA, public-sector or custom data-retention agreements. [1] |
| How usage is limited | No usage metering. There are only abuse limits: 60 requests a minute per key and 120 a minute per member. | Not stated on the page we read. [1] |
| Reach across AI apps | One memory for every AI you connect, led by OAuth sign-in: the Connect page has steps for Claude (web, Desktop, mobile), ChatGPT, VS Code Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Zed, Mistral Le Chat and Perplexity, plus generic steps for any other MCP app, and a personal key as a fallback, plus REST. AI tools that support neither MCP nor REST calls cannot connect. Tephra's OAuth discovery endpoints were verified live on 2026-10-10. | Memory is scoped to Claude, with a separate memory space per project, and is shared between Claude chat and Claude Cowork when Cowork runs in the cloud - local Cowork sessions do not use memory. Claude also supports moving memory by pasted text: import from other AI providers (Settings, Memory, Start import) and export of your memory for backup or migration. The help pages call memory imports experimental and still in active development, and list imports for Free, Pro, Max and Team plans; the export instructions carry no such label, and core memory is not described that way. [1] [2] |
| Seeing and correcting what is stored | A member can view memories, edit or delete them, read edit history, contest a memory, export their own data (app session), and revoke any AI key with an activity log. | Settings, Memory lists topics you can read, edit or delete, and you can tell Claude to remember, change or forget. Memory can be paused or reset, and turned off for a single chat from the plus menu before the first message. Incognito chats are not saved to memory. [1] |
| Hosting and self-hosting | Hosted service run by Obsidian Metrics. Self-hosting is not part of the product. We make no encryption-at-rest or compliance-certification claim. | A vendor-hosted feature of Claude. [1] |
| How memories get in | The connected AI writes them by calling a remember tool. Tephra does not capture chats automatically and has no Gmail, Slack or Drive connectors. You can upload text, markdown, JSON, XML and text-layer PDF files. | Claude saves on its own and you can tell it to remember something. Government ID numbers, criminal history, financial account numbers and immigration status are never saved. [1] |
Where Claude memory is better
- Claude memory. It is built into Claude with a separate memory space per project, a per-chat switch and incognito chats, needs no setup, and can move memory by pasted text, with an import path its help pages call experimental. [1] [2]
Choose Claude memory if: You work mainly in Claude and want memory with project separation and no setup.
Where Tephra is better
- Connected AI apps read and write the same memory directly, rather than moving it between apps by pasting text. Claude's import and export, for example, works by pasted text, and its import path is marked experimental.
- A flat price with no usage metering, instead of credits or request quotas.
- A shared library that Tephra grows every hour from public research and regulatory sources, included with the product. We did not find a competitor that bundles one; that is a qualitative check, not an exhaustive market survey.
- Recall in the app tells you which related memories it did not load and how complete the answer looks.
Choose Tephra if: You switch between Claude accounts or other AI apps and want the same memory in all of them.
Where Tephra falls short
- Tephra has no free tier and no self-hosted option.
- The MCP tools return ranked records only. The completeness alert is shown in the app, not through MCP.
- No automatic chat capture, and no connectors to Gmail, Slack or Drive.
- No image or audio ingest, and no OCR for scanned PDFs.
- Stale-fact handling is partial.
- No published, vendor-comparable benchmark, and no accuracy lead we can defend.
What we have and have not measured
On 50 held-out LongMemEval-S questions never used in Tephra development, Tephra answered 39 of 50 correctly (78%, 95% confidence interval 65-87%) with a gpt-4o-mini reader, and every evidence session was in its top 10 results for 46 of 46 answerable questions.
Method: LongMemEval-S cleaned, stratified 100-question subset; gpt-4o-mini reader over top-10 retrieved items; official GPT-4o judge prompt; one run, 2026-10-08; held-out questions are the 50 never used in earlier Tephra tuning; competitors run locally from open source under the same harness.
In that same-harness run, none of Tephra's leads over the other systems tested was statistically significant after correcting for multiple comparisons, and its margin over a plain keyword-search baseline was not significant either. We do not claim Tephra is the most accurate memory. We did not benchmark Supermemory, Zep, ChatGPT memory or Claude memory, and we do not compare ourselves with any vendor's self-reported numbers.
Frequently asked
Does Claude have memory?
Yes. Anthropic's help article says memory is on by default for Free, Pro and Max plans, saves individual topics as you chat, and keeps a separate memory space per project.
Can I move Claude memory to another AI?
Partly. Claude's help center describes importing memory from other AI providers and exporting your Claude memory for backup or migration, by pasted text. It marks the import path experimental and still in active development; the export instructions carry no such label.
Does Tephra work with Claude Code and Claude Desktop?
Yes. Both are documented connection targets, through OAuth sign-in or a personal key.
More comparisons
Sources
Competitor facts come only from the pages below, accessed 2026-10-10.
- Claude Help Center, chat search and memory: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11817273-use-claude-s-chat-search-and-memory-to-build-on-previous-context (accessed 2026-10-10)
- Claude Help Center, import and export your memory: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12123587-import-and-export-your-memory-from-claude (accessed 2026-10-10)