DBMS > MongoDB vs. Neo4j vs. RethinkDB vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison MongoDB vs. Neo4j vs. RethinkDB vs. Tarantool

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

Primary database model

Document store

Graph DBMS

Document store

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	2.74
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	1.72
Rank	#144	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#66	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

neo4j.com/docs

rethinkdb.com/docs

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

MongoDB, Inc

Neo4j, Inc.

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

2009

2007

2009

2008

Current release

6.0.7, June 2023

5.19, April 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

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

Apache Version 2

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

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

C++

Java, Scala

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

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

schema-free

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

APIs and other access methods

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

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

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

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

via event handler

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

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

Sharding

range based

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

Source-replica replication

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

Immediate Consistency

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Atomic single-document operations

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

yes, write ahead logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

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

yes

users and table-level permissions

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

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

Competitive advantages

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

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

Typical application scenarios

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

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

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...
» more

News

Creating the GQL Database Language Standard
7 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 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

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.