AI memory comparison
Tephra vs Supermemory
Supermemory started as developer infrastructure for agents and now also offers a remote MCP server that gives MCP-compatible assistants a shared memory with OAuth sign-in, so it overlaps with Tephra more than the other developer tools do. It adds connectors, team spaces and a free tier, none of which Tephra has. Tephra's differences are a flat price with no credits and a shared library of public sources.
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 Supermemory side by side
| Feature | Tephra | Supermemory |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A hosted memory your connected AI apps share: they recall from it and write to it over MCP or REST. | Context infrastructure for AI agents: memory, retrieval (SuperRAG) and user profiles through one API. It also offers a remote MCP server that gives MCP-compatible assistants a shared memory layer, with team spaces. [1] [2] |
| 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. | Free at $0 with $5 of monthly credits. Pro is $19 a month, Max is $100 a month, Scale is $399 a month, Enterprise is custom. [3] |
| How usage is limited | No usage metering. There are only abuse limits: 60 requests a minute per key and 120 a minute per member. | Monthly credit balance on every plan, drawn down at a token-based rate card for memory, retrieval and operations. [3] |
| 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. | Remote MCP server that any compatible client can add; the client opens Supermemory in a browser for OAuth sign-in, so no API key is required. Tools include search, profile, save and forget. [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. | The MCP tools can list memories and documents and save or forget information. Controls for end users beyond that are not described on the pages we read. [2] |
| 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. | Cloud platform. Self-hosted deployments are available on Scale and Enterprise, and the docs describe a self-hosted single binary. SOC 2 and HIPAA BAA are listed on Scale. [3] [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. | Connectors for Google Drive, Gmail, Notion, OneDrive, GitHub, Granola and a web crawler (the pricing page lists Gmail on Max and S3 and web crawler connectors on Scale). Ingests text, chats, PDFs, images, video and code. [4] [3] [1] |
Where Supermemory is better
- Supermemory. It has data connectors (Google Drive, Gmail, Notion, OneDrive, GitHub and more; Gmail is listed on Max), an OAuth MCP server with team spaces, and a free tier. Tephra has no member connectors and no free tier. [4] [2] [3]
Choose Supermemory if: You want connectors that pull documents into memory, team spaces, a free tier to start, or self-hosting and compliance options on a higher plan.
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 want a flat price with no credit balance, and a shared library of public research and regulatory sources included.
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
How much does Supermemory cost?
Supermemory lists a free plan with $5 of monthly credits, Pro at $19, Max at $100 and Scale at $399 a month, as read on 2026-10-10. Usage beyond credits follows a token-based rate card.
Does Supermemory work with Claude and Cursor?
Its documentation describes a remote MCP server that any compatible client can add, with OAuth sign-in and no API key. A separate docs page covers coding-agent setup.
Did you benchmark Tephra against Supermemory?
No. Supermemory was not run in our test, so we make no accuracy claim about it either way.
More comparisons
Sources
Competitor facts come only from the pages below, accessed 2026-10-10.
- Supermemory documentation overview: https://supermemory.ai/docs/intro (accessed 2026-10-10)
- Supermemory documentation, Supermemory MCP: https://supermemory.ai/docs/supermemory-mcp/mcp (accessed 2026-10-10)
- Supermemory pricing: https://supermemory.ai/pricing (accessed 2026-10-10)
- Supermemory documentation, connectors overview: https://supermemory.ai/docs/connectors/overview (accessed 2026-10-10)