DBMS > Cassandra vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

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

Primary database model

Wide column store

Document store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	112.20
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	419.15
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	49.99
Rank	#22	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.mongodb.com

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

MongoDB, Inc

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2008

2009

2007

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

5.14, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

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.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

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

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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)

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

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
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

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

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

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

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

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...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
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