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DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameAmazon DynamoDB  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonNeo4j  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionHosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloudA horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings
Primary database modelDocument store
Key-value store
Relational DBMSGraph DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score79.30
Rank#15  Overall
#3  Document stores
#2  Key-value stores
Score2.56
Rank#97  Overall
#50  Relational DBMS
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Websiteaws.amazon.com/­dynamodbcloud.google.com/­spannerneo4j.com
Technical documentationdocs.aws.amazon.com/­dynamodbcloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsneo4j.com/­docs
DeveloperAmazonGoogleNeo4j, Inc.
Initial release201220172007
Current release5.23, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial infofree tier for a limited amount of database operationscommercialOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageJava, Scala
Server operating systemshostedhostedLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeyesschema-free and schema-optional
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.no
Secondary indexesyesyesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011no
APIs and other access methodsRESTful HTTP APIgRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
Supported programming languages.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnonoyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersyes infoby integration with AWS Lambdanoyes infovia event handler
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingShardingyes using Neo4j Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.Causal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version only
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsno infomay be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)yes infousing Google Cloud Dataflowno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency infocan be specified for read operations
Immediate ConsistencyCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphs
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infoACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and regionACID infoStrict serializable isolationACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
User concepts infoAccess controlAccess rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)
More information provided by the system vendor
Amazon DynamoDBGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
News

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15 May 2025

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13 May 2025

Integrating Neo4j With LangChain4j for GraphRAG Vector Stores and Retrievers
12 May 2025

This Week in Neo4j: NODES, Knowledge Graph, Graph Analytics, MCP and more
10 May 2025

Aura Graph Analytics: A Technical Deep Dive
7 May 2025

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More resources
Amazon DynamoDBGoogle Cloud SpannerNeo4j
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Recent citations in the news

Amazon DynamoDB data modeling for Multi-Tenancy – Part 2
16 May 2025, Amazon Web Services

Ingest CSV data to Amazon DynamoDB using AWS Lambda
12 May 2025, Amazon Web Services

Using Amazon S3 Express One Zone as a caching layer for S3 Standard | Amazon Web Services
16 May 2025, Amazon Web Services

Announcing the end of support for AWS DynamoDB Session State Provider
7 May 2025, Amazon Web Services

Announcing configurable point-in-time recovery periods for Amazon DynamoDB
7 January 2025, Amazon Web Services

provided by Google News

Google Cloud Introduces HDD Tier for Spanner Database, Cutting Cold Storage Costs by 80%
22 March 2025, infoq.com

New features make Google's Spanner a database for AI
1 August 2024, TechTarget

Google Cloud adds graph processing to Spanner, SQL support to Bigtable
1 August 2024, InfoWorld

Google Cloud adds graph and vector search features to Spanner database
2 August 2024, techzine.eu

Google’s Plan to Make GCP ‘The Best Cloud for Machine Learning’
5 May 2025, SDx Central

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NASA jettisons Neo4j database for Memgraph citing costs
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14 May 2025, CDOTrends

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Latest Neo4j release aims to simplify graph technology
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provided by Google News



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