DBMS > Neo4j vs. Redis vs. Riak KV vs. ScyllaDB vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. Redis vs. Riak KV vs. ScyllaDB vs. Tarantool

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

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.

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

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

Primary database model

Graph DBMS

Key-value store

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

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Wide column store

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

Key-value store

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	44.89
Rank	#21	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

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

Score	4.01
Rank	#79	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Score	4.08
Rank	#76	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	1.67
Rank	#143	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#65	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

neo4j.com/docs

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

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

docs.scylladb.com

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

Neo4j, Inc.

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2007

2009

2015

2008

Current release

5.20, May 2024

7.2.5, May 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses available

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

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

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.

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

Java, Scala

Erlang

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

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

Linux

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

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

partial

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

yes

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

with RediSearch module

restricted

yes

cluster global secondary indices

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

with RediSQL module

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

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

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

.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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

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

Erlang

yes, Lua

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

yes

via event handler

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Sharding

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

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

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

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

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

through RedisGears

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

yes

Relationships in graphs

links between data sets can be stored

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single 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

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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 tables

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

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

yes, using Riak Security

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
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ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
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Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
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ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
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Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
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ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
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ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» more

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