DBMS > Couchbase vs. NebulaGraph vs. Neo4j vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. NebulaGraph vs. Neo4j vs. Tarantool

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

Primary database model

Document store

Graph DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

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

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	2.23
Rank	#116	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	1.67
Rank	#143	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#65	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

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

neo4j.com

www.tarantool.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

docs.nebula-graph.io

neo4j.com/docs

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Vesoft Inc.

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2011

2019

2007

2008

Current release

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

5.20, May 2024

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Java, Scala

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

Strong typed schema

schema-free and schema-optional

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

APIs and other access methods

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

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

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

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

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

user defined functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

via event handler

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

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

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using RocksDB

yes

yes, write ahead logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

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

Role-based access control

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

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

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

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

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

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

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