DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. Neo4j vs. RDF4J

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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

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector 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	134.78
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	423.96
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	44.47
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.71
Rank	#231	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.mongodb.com

neo4j.com

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

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

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

neo4j.com/docs

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Elastic

MongoDB, Inc

Neo4j, Inc.

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2010

2009

2007

2004

Current release

8.6, January 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

5.19, April 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

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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 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

Java

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

Linux
OS X
Unix
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

yes

RDF Schemas

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

yes

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

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

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

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

via event handler

yes

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

none

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

none

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

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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...
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Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

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

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

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

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

Market metrics

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

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

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