DBMS > GraphDB vs. Neo4j vs. RocksDB vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison GraphDB vs. Neo4j vs. RocksDB vs. TerminusDB

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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

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	3.32
Rank	#91	Overall
	#6	Graph DBMS
	#4	RDF stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Score	0.17
Rank	#325	Overall
	#29	Graph DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation

neo4j.com/docs

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Social network pages

Developer

Ontotext

Neo4j, Inc.

Facebook, Inc.

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2000

2007

2013

2018

Current release

10.4, October 2023

5.19, April 2024

8.11.4, April 2024

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Some plugins of GraphDB Workbench are open sourced

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

GPL V3

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

Java

Java, Scala

C++

Prolog, Rust

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

Data scheme

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

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

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

C++ API
Java API

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

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

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

JavaScript
Python

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

horizontal partitioning

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

Journaling Streams

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Constraint checking

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory journaling

In-memory capabilities

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

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)

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Ontotext GraphDB is a semantic database engine that allows organizations to build...
» more

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

Competitive advantages

GraphDB allows you to link text and data in big knowledge graphs. It’s easy to experiment...
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Metadata enrichment and management, linked data publishing, semantic inferencing...
» more

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

Key customers

GraphDB provides a platform for building next-generation AI and Knowledge Graph...
» more

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

Market metrics

GraphDB is the most utilized semantic triplestore for mission-critical enterprise...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

GraphDB Free is a non-commercial version and is free to use. GraphDB Enterprise edition...
» more

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

News

Case study: Policy Enforcement Automation With Semantics
2 May 2024

Okay, RAG… We Have a Problem
26 April 2024

Scaling Understanding with the Help of Feedback Loops, Knowledge Graphs and NLP
19 April 2024

How Knowledge Graphs Power Data Mesh and Data Fabric
10 April 2024

Building Smarter Financial Services: The Role of Semantic Technologies, Knowledge Graphs and Generative AI
3 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
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

What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?
24 April 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Google Cloud, Analysis, Knowledge Graph, Relationships and more
20 April 2024

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