DBMS > Neo4j vs. PostGIS vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. PostGIS vs. PostgreSQL

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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

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Graph DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	43.69
Rank	#20	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	19.70
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	663.41
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

neo4j.com

postgis.net

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

postgis.net/documentation

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2007

2005

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

5.23, August 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

Linux

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

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

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.

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

via event handler

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

based on PostgreSQL

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Typical application scenarios

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

Key customers

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

Market metrics

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

Licensing and pricing models

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

News

Neo4j Positioned as a Visionary in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems
23 December 2024

This Week in Neo4j: FIKA AI, Hackathon, Knowledge Graph, Snowflake and more
21 December 2024

This Week in Neo4j: NODES 2024, Data Import, GenAI, Spring Data and more
7 December 2024

What Is GraphRAG?
5 December 2024

Neo4j Expands AWS Collaboration With New Competencies in Finance, Automotive, GenAI, and ML
5 December 2024

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