DBMS > Citus vs. NebulaGraph vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch

System Properties Comparison Citus vs. NebulaGraph vs. Neo4j vs. OpenSearch

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector DBMS

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

Score	2.15
Rank	#117	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	2.23
Rank	#116	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

www.citusdata.com

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

neo4j.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

docs.citusdata.com

docs.nebula-graph.io

neo4j.com/docs

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Vesoft Inc.

Neo4j, Inc.

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2010

2019

2007

2021

Current release

8.1, December 2018

5.20, May 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 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.

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

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

Linux

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

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

yes

Strong typed schema

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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.

yes

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using RocksDB

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
» more

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

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
» more

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

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
» more

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

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Key customers

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
» more

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

Market metrics

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

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

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

News

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, Testing, Knowledge Graph, GenAI and more
8 June 2024

Neo4j and Snowflake Bring Graph Data Science Into the AI Data Cloud
4 June 2024

RDF vs. Property Graphs: Choosing the Right Approach for Implementing a Knowledge Graph
4 June 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Importing Data, NODES, GenAI, Going Meta and more
1 June 2024

openCypher Will Pave the Road to GQL for Cypher Implementers
22 May 2024

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