DBMS > Couchbase vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx vs. Splice Machine vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Neo4j vs. Sphinx vs. Splice Machine vs. Weaviate

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

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

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Open-Source SQL RDBMS for Operational and Analytical use cases with native Machine Learning, powered by Hadoop and Spark

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

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

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.54
Rank	#250	Overall
	#114	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

neo4j.com/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

splicemachine.com/how-it-works

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Neo4j, Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Splice Machine

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2011

2007

2001

2014

2019

Current release

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

5.19, April 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

3.1, March 2021

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

AGPL 3.0, commercial license available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate 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

Java, Scala

C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

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

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Proprietary protocol

JDBC
Native Spark Datasource
ODBC

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
R
Scala

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Java

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Shared Nothhing Auto-Sharding, Columnar Partitioning

Sharding

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

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Yes, via Full Spark Integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

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

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

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

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

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

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

News

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7 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
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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

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