DBMS > GraphDB vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. Neo4j vs. RavenDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Enterprise-ready RDF and graph database with efficient reasoning, cluster and external index synchronization support. It supports also SQL JDBC access to Knowledge Graph and GraphQL over SPARQL.

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Graph DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.57
Rank	#95	Overall
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#3	RDF stores

Score	47.59
Rank	#20	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.50
Rank	#98	Overall
	#17	Document stores

Website

www.ontotext.com

neo4j.com

ravendb.net

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

neo4j.com/docs

ravendb.net/docs

Developer

Ontotext

Neo4j, Inc.

Hibernating Rhinos

Initial release

2000

2007

2010

Current release

10.4, October 2023

5.23, August 2024

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

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.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support; RDF shapes

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

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.

Secondary indexes

yes, supports real-time synchronization and indexing in SOLR/Elastic search/Lucene and GeoSPARQL geometry data indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

stored SPARQL accessed as SQL using Apache Calcite through JDBC/ODBC

SQL-like query language (RQL)

APIs and other access methods

GeoSPARQL
GraphQL
GraphQL Federation
Java API
JDBC
RDF4J API
RDFS
RIO
Sail API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL 1.1

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C#
Clojure
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

well-defined plugin interfaces; JavaScript server-side extensibility

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency, Eventual consistency (configurable in cluster mode per master or individual client request)

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

User concepts

Access control

Default Basic authentication through RDF4J client, or via Java when run with cURL, default token-based in the Workbench or via Rest API, optional access through OpenID or Kerberos single sign-on.

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

Authorization levels configured per client per database

More information provided by the system vendor

News

Is a Knowledge Graph a Graph Database?
25 April 2025

Transform Static Risk Assessment Into a Dynamic Data-Driven Strategy
22 April 2025

LLM Knowledge Graph Builder Back-End Architecture and API Overview
14 April 2025

Build an Intelligent Movie Search With Neo4j and Vertex AI
14 April 2025

This Week in Neo4j: NODES, GraphRAG, Agents, Knowledge Graph and more
12 April 2025

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

Related products and services

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Applying Graph Analytics to Game of Thrones
12 June 2019, Amy Hodler & Mark Needham, Neo4j (guest author)

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

The openCypher Project: Help Shape the SQL for Graphs
22 December 2015, Emil Eifrem (guest author)

show all

Recent citations in the news

Semantic Web Company and Ontotext merge to form Graphwise
23 October 2024, Blocks and Files

Semantic Web Company and Ontotext Merge to Create Knowledge Graph and AI Powerhouse Graphwise
23 October 2024, PR Newswire

Ontotext Platform 3.0 for Enterprise Knowledge Graphs Released
18 December 2019, KDnuggets

A Content Management Platform and a Graph Database Come Together in the New Company: Graphwise
28 October 2024, The Recursive

Ontotext's GraphDB 10 Brings Modern Data Architectures to the Mainstream with Better Resilience and Еаsier Operations
5 July 2022, PR Newswire

provided by Google News

Neo4j Surpasses $200M in Revenue, Accelerates Leadership in GenAI-Driven Graph Technology
19 November 2024, PR Newswire

Data Science Firm Neo4j Reportedly Prepping IPO
19 November 2024, PYMNTS.com

Swedish company accelerates toward IPO with $50M investment at $2B valuation - ArcticStartup
28 November 2024, ArcticStartup

Discover Graph Databases with Neo4j and PHP
7 November 2024, SitePoint

Neo4j lowers barriers to graph technology with gen AI copilot, 15x read capacity
4 September 2024, VentureBeat

provided by Google News

RavenDB Welcomes David Baruc as Chief Revenue Officer: Seasoned Tech Leader to Drive Global Sales and Accelerate Growth
13 June 2023, PR Newswire

Install the NoSQL RavenDB Data System
14 May 2021, The New Stack

Get To Know: Oren Eini, CEO, RavenDB
22 October 2019, Intelligent CIO

RavenDB Launches Version 6.0 Lightning Fast Queries, Data Integrations, Corax Indexing Engine, and Sharding
2 October 2023, PR Newswire

provided by Google News

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