DBMS > MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. Redis vs. TinkerGraph vs. Titan

System Properties Comparison MariaDB vs. Neo4j vs. Redis vs. TinkerGraph vs. Titan

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Titan has been decommisioned after the takeover by Datastax. It will be removed from the DB-Engines ranking. A fork has been open-sourced as JanusGraph.

Description

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

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

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Titan is a Graph DBMS optimized for distributed clusters.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	155.94
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	0.13
Rank	#345	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

neo4j.com

redis.com
redis.io

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

github.com/thinkaurelius/titan

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

neo4j.com/docs

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

github.com/thinkaurelius/titan/wiki

Developer

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Neo4j, Inc.

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Aurelius, owned by DataStax

Initial release

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2007

2009

2012

Current release

11.3.2, February 2024

5.20, May 2024

7.2.5, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache license, version 2.0

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C and C++

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free and schema-optional

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

with RediSearch module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

TinkerPop 3

Java API
TinkerPop Blueprints
TinkerPop Frames
TinkerPop Gremlin
TinkerPop Rexster

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

Groovy
Java

Clojure
Java
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

none

yes

via pluggable storage backends

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

through RedisGears

yes

via Faunus, a graph analytics engine

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Relationships in graph

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

optional

yes

Supports various storage backends: Cassandra, HBase, Berkeley DB, Akiban, Hazelcast

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

User authentification and security via Rexster Graph Server

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
» more

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

Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more

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

Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

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

Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

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

Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
» more

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

Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more

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

News

This Week in Neo4j: Llamaindex, Semantic Search, Graph Database, Entity Resolution and more
15 June 2024

Neo4j-Databricks Connector Delivers Deeper Insights, Faster GenAI Development
10 June 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Podcast, Testing, Knowledge Graph, GenAI and more
8 June 2024

Neo4j and Snowflake Bring Graph Data Science Into the AI Data Cloud
4 June 2024

RDF vs. Property Graphs: Choosing the Right Approach for Implementing a Knowledge Graph
4 June 2024

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.