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RetainDB vs Nia

RetainDB vs Nia: fixing memory vs fixing retrieval — two different problems

If your agent hallucinates or retrieves poorly, that's a retrieval problem — Nia's lane. If your agent forgets users between sessions or doesn't know your product's documentation, that's what RetainDB handles — user memory, context assembly, and knowledge base ingestion in one system.

88% Preference recall

79% Overall memory score

0% Hallucination rate

<40ms Retrieval latency

88%

Preference recall

LongMemEval · RetainDB

79%

Overall memory score

LongMemEval · RetainDB

Hallucination rate

In benchmark testing · RetainDB

<40ms

Retrieval latency

Global average · RetainDB

TL;DR

Nia fixes bad retrieval — lower hallucinations, cheaper than RAG. RetainDB fixes forgetting users — persistent memory across sessions. They solve adjacent problems. You might need both.

At a glance

RetainDB vs Nia

Feature

RetainDB

Nia

Preference recall (LongMemEval)

88%

Different benchmark focus

Primary problem solved

Agent forgets users across sessions

Agent hallucinates or RAG is too expensive

Memory taxonomy

13 typed categories per user

Context chunks — not per-user memory

Memory scopes

6 dimensions (user, session, project…)

Document and query context — not per-user

Best for

Users who should feel known every session

Queries that need better retrieval accuracy

Knowledge base ingestion

22 connectors — Notion, Confluence, PDF, YouTube, arXiv, Playwright, GitHub, Discord, Slack and more

Document ingestion for retrieval, not per-user KB

Memory + knowledge together

User memory and KB composed in the same retrieval call

Per-query retrieval only — no cross-session user state

The specifics

Why the difference matters

Two different problems

Teams that conflate retrieval and memory often buy retrieval tooling — then wonder why users still have to re-explain themselves every session. Nia improves how context is selected in a single query. RetainDB makes that context persist across all queries, forever.

88% preference recall — the user-visible metric

LongMemEval's preference recall task is the closest benchmark to what users actually experience: does the agent remember what I told it? RetainDB scores 88%. This is the number that turns a stateless agent into one that feels like it knows you.

They're complementary, not competing

Many teams need both: better retrieval quality per query (Nia) and persistent memory across sessions (RetainDB). Starting with memory usually has higher immediate ROI — users feel it from session one.

Knowledge base is a first-class feature in RetainDB

Nia focuses on per-query context retrieval from documents. RetainDB adds a layer on top: 22 built-in connectors (Notion, Confluence, PDFs, YouTube, arXiv, Playwright, GitHub, GitLab, Discord, Slack, HuggingFace, sitemaps and more) let you ingest your entire team knowledge base. Then memory and knowledge are retrieved together — the agent knows the user and knows your product documentation in the same call.

Pick your fit

Who should use what

Choose RetainDB when

Your agent forgets users between sessions

Users have to re-explain themselves every conversation

You need your agents to know your docs, help center, or Notion workspace

You need per-user memory with 6 scope dimensions

88% preference recall is the metric you care about

Consider Nia when

Hallucination rate is your main problem, not session memory

You're replacing expensive RAG infrastructure

The use case is document Q&A, not personalisation

Common questions

What people ask before deciding

Can I use both RetainDB and Nia together?

Yes — they operate at different layers. Nia improves retrieval quality in individual queries. RetainDB makes user context persist across every query. There's no overlap.

How do I know which problem I have?

If users complain that the AI gives wrong answers, that's retrieval. If users complain they have to re-explain themselves every conversation, that's memory. Most teams with both problems should fix memory first — the impact is immediate and user-visible.

Sources

Nia official site Nia benchmark article RetainDB RAG vs memory

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