DBMS > Cassandra vs. GraphDB vs. Neo4j vs. TerminusDB vs. YugabyteDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. GraphDB vs. Neo4j vs. TerminusDB vs. YugabyteDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

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

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

High-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications. Wire and feature compatible with PostgreSQL.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
RDF store

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	3.25
Rank	#91	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.23
Rank	#316	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Score	2.63
Rank	#109	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

neo4j.com/docs

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

docs.yugabyte.com
github.com/yugabyte/yugabyte-db

Social network pages

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Ontotext

Neo4j, Inc.

DataChemist Ltd.

Yugabyte Inc.

Initial release

2008

2000

2007

2018

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

10.4, October 2023

5.20, May 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

2.19, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL V3

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

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

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

YugabyteDB Managed is the fully managed database-as-a-service offering of YugabyteDB. Get started quickly, and effortlessly ensure continuous availability and limitless scale of your cloud native applications.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

Prolog, Rust

C and C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Linux

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

depending on used data model

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, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

yes, PostgreSQL compatible

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

JDBC
YCQL, an SQL-based flexible-schema API with its roots in Cassandra Query Language
YSQL - a fully relational SQL API that is wire compatible with the SQL language in PostgreSQL

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

JavaScript
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

sql, plpgsql, C

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Graph Partitioning

Hash and Range Sharding, row-level geo-partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Journaling Streams

Based on Raft distributed consensus protocol, minimum 3 replicas for continuous availability

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, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

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

Strong consistency on writes and tunable consistency on reads

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Distributed ACID with Serializable & Snapshot Isolation. Inspired by Google Spanner architecture.

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory journaling

yes

based on RocksDB

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

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

Role-based access control

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

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

YugabyteDB is an open source distributed SQL database for cloud native transactional...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

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

PostgreSQL compatible: Get instantly productive with a PostgreSQL compatible RDBMS....
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

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

Systems of record and engagement for cloud native applications that require resilience,...
» more

Key customers

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

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» 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

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

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

2 Million+ lifetime clusters deployed, 6.5K+ GitHub stars, 7K YugabyteDB Community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

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

Apache 2.0 license for the database
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.