DBMS > Neo4j vs. NSDb vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. NSDb vs. RDF4J

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

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

Primary database model

Graph DBMS

Time Series DBMS

RDF store

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

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#385	Overall
	#42	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.68
Rank	#223	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

neo4j.com

nsdb.io

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

nsdb.io/Architecture

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

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

Initial release

2007

2017

2004

Current release

5.23, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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.

Implementation language

Java, Scala

Java

Server operating systems

Linux

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

Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

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

Java
Scala

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

User concepts

Access control

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

More information provided by the system vendor

News

Aura Graph Analytics: A Technical Deep Dive
7 May 2025

Introducing Neo4j Aura Graph Analytics: Scalable, Easy-to-Deploy Graph Analytics for Any Data Source
7 May 2025

Agentic GraphRAG for Commercial Contracts
5 May 2025

Simplify Modern Application Development With GraphQL on Neo4j AuraDB
30 April 2025

Text2Cypher: The Impact of Difficult Example Selection
29 April 2025

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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

Neo4j goes serverless, bringing graph analytics to any data source
7 May 2025, SiliconANGLE

NASA jettisons Neo4j database for Memgraph citing costs
7 May 2025, theregister.com

Latest Neo4j release aims to simplify graph technology
7 May 2025, TechTarget

Neo4j Launches Industry's First Graph Analytics Offering For Any Data Platform
7 May 2025, PR Newswire

Neo4j launches serverless graph analytics platform for all users
7 May 2025, IT Brief Australia

provided by Google News

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