DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

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

Search engine
Vector DBMS

Document store

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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	123.81
Rank	#9	Overall
	#1	Search engines
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	402.51
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.mongodb.com

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Elastic

MongoDB, Inc

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2010

2009

2007

Current release

8.6, January 2023

7.0.5, January 2024

5.23, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Elastic License

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.

MongoDB Flex @ STACKIT offers managed MongoDB Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.
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.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Data scheme

schema-free

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

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

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

yes

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

yes

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

ES-Hadoop Connector

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

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

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

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.

Memcached and Redis integration

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

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

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
» more

Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
» more

Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
» more

Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
» more

Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
» more

News

Agentic GraphRAG for Commercial Contracts
5 May 2025

Simplify Modern Application Development With GraphQL on Neo4j AuraDB
30 April 2025

Text2Cypher: The Impact of Difficult Example Selection
29 April 2025

This Week in Neo4j: MCP, Snowflake, GenAI, GraphRAG and more
26 April 2025

Is a Knowledge Graph a Graph Database?
25 April 2025

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.