DBMS > Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. PostgreSQL vs. SurrealDB

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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

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

A fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS

Primary database model

Graph DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

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	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	1.08
Rank	#176	Overall
	#30	Document stores
	#16	Graph DBMS

Website

neo4j.com

www.postgresql.org

surrealdb.com

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

www.postgresql.org/docs

surrealdb.com/docs

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

SurrealDB Ltd

Initial release

2007

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2022

Current release

5.23, August 2024

16.4, August 2024

v1.5.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

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Implementation language

Java, Scala

Rust

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

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free and schema-optional

yes

schema-free

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

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

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

GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket

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

Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust

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

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

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes, based on authentication and database rules

More information provided by the system vendor

News

Integrating Neo4j With LangChain4j for GraphRAG Vector Stores and Retrievers
12 May 2025

This Week in Neo4j: NODES, Knowledge Graph, Graph Analytics, MCP and more
10 May 2025

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

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