DBMS > ArangoDB vs. Couchbase vs. Neo4j vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison ArangoDB vs. Couchbase vs. Neo4j vs. SwayDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Document store

Graph DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	3.32
Rank	#90	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#382	Overall
	#59	Key-value stores

Website

Technical documentation

docs.arangodb.com

docs.couchbase.com

neo4j.com/docs

Social network pages

Developer

ArangoDB Inc.

Couchbase, Inc.

Neo4j, Inc.

Simer Plaha

Initial release

2012

2011

2007

2018

Current release

3.11.5, November 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

5.20, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

C++

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java, Scala

Scala

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

APIs and other access methods

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

since version 2.0

Automatic Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Atomic execution of operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
» more

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
» more

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Key customers

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

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