DBMS > Cassandra vs. ClickHouse vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Neo4j vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. ClickHouse vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Neo4j vs. TerarkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

DataStax Enterprise (DSE) is the always-on, scalable data platform built on Apache Cassandra and designed for hybrid Cloud. DSE integrates graph, search, analytics, administration, developer tooling, and monitoring into a unified platform.

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

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	5.80
Rank	#60	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Website

cassandra.apache.org

clickhouse.com

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

neo4j.com

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.datastax.com

neo4j.com/docs

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Clickhouse Inc.

DataStax

Neo4j, Inc.

ByteDance, originally Terark

Initial release

2008

2016

2011

2007

2016

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

v24.3.2.23-lts, April 2024

6.8, April 2020

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted open source version available

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.

Datastax Astra DB: Astra DB simplifies cloud-native Cassandra application development for your apps, microservices and functions. Deploy in minutes on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and have it managed for you by the experts, with serverless, pay-as-you-go pricing.

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

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL); Spark SQL

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
TinkerPop Gremlin

with DSE Graph

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

key based and custom

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

yes using Neo4j Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware, advanced replication for edge computing

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency
Tunable Consistency

consistency level can be individually decided with each write operation

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

DataStax Enterprise is scale-out data infrastructure for enterprises that need to...
» more

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

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Supporting the following application requirements: Zero downtime - Built on Apache...
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Applications that must be massively and linearly scalable with 100% uptime and able...
» more

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

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft, Safeway, Sony, UBS, and...
» more

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

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Among the Forbes 100 Most Innovative Companies, DataStax is trusted by 5 of the top...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

Annual subscription
» more

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

News

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

GQL: The ISO Standard for Graphs Has Arrived
25 April 2024

What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?
24 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Google Cloud, Analysis, Knowledge Graph, Relationships and more
20 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.