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DBMS > Neo4j vs. RethinkDB vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison Neo4j vs. RethinkDB vs. SurrealDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameNeo4j  Xexclude from comparisonRethinkDB  Xexclude from comparisonSurrealDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionScalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offeringsDBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.A fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS
Primary database modelGraph DBMSDocument storeDocument store
Graph DBMS
Secondary database modelsSpatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score47.91
Rank#20  Overall
#1  Graph DBMS
Score2.30
Rank#105  Overall
#19  Document stores
Score1.08
Rank#176  Overall
#30  Document stores
#16  Graph DBMS
Websiteneo4j.comrethinkdb.comsurrealdb.com
Technical documentationneo4j.com/­docsrethinkdb.com/­docssurrealdb.com/­docs
DeveloperNeo4j, Inc.The Linux Foundation infosince July 2017SurrealDB Ltd
Initial release200720092022
Current release5.23, August 20242.4.1, August 2020v1.5.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoGPL version3, commercial licenses availableOpen Source infoApache Version 2Open Source
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageJava, ScalaC++Rust
Server operating systemsLinux infoCan also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
Data schemeschema-free and schema-optionalschema-freeschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyes infostring, binary, float, bool, date, geometryyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.no
Secondary indexesyes infopluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Luceneyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLnonoSQL-like query language
APIs and other access methodsBolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM infoObject Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3
GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket
Supported programming languages.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
C infocommunity-supported driver
C# infocommunity-supported driver
C++ infocommunity-supported driver
Clojure infocommunity-supported driver
Dart infocommunity-supported driver
Erlang infocommunity-supported driver
Go infocommunity-supported driver
Haskell infocommunity-supported driver
Java infoofficial driver
JavaScript (Node.js) infoofficial driver
Lisp infocommunity-supported driver
Lua infocommunity-supported driver
Objective-C infocommunity-supported driver
Perl infocommunity-supported driver
PHP infocommunity-supported driver
Python infoofficial driver
Ruby infoofficial driver
Scala infocommunity-supported driver
Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infoUser defined Procedures and Functions
Triggersyes infovia event handlerClient-side triggers through changefeeds
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesyes using Neo4j FabricSharding inforange based
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesCausal Clustering using Raft protocol infoavailable in in Enterprise Version onlySource-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoyesno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemCausal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infoRelationships in graphsno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDAtomic single-document operationsACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyes infoMVCC basedyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)yes infousers and table-level permissionsyes, based on authentication and database rules
More information provided by the system vendor
Neo4jRethinkDBSurrealDB
News

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

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

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More resources
Neo4jRethinkDBSurrealDB
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2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

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22 December 2015, Emil Eifrem (guest author)

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Recent citations in the news

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

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

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

Android Studio Meerkat Feature Drop, Neo4j Aura Graph Analytics, and more software development news
7 May 2025, SD Times

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How to Use RethinkDB with Node.js Applications
7 November 2024, SitePoint

An introduction to building realtime apps with RethinkDB
4 June 2015, devmio

NoSQL Software Market May See Big Move | MongoDB, MarkLogic, RethinkDB
10 June 2022, openPR.com

MongoDB: The Popular Database for the Internet of Things
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17 April 2017, Crunchbase News

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SurrealDB Launches Surreal Cloud, a Fully Managed Database Service That Tackles the Complexity Issues Faced by Developer Teams
7 December 2024, insideAI News

SurrealDB Empowers Developers to Build Applications with the Launch of SurrealDB University
15 October 2024, Business Wire

SurrealDB's Surreal Cloud debuts on AWS S3 for scalable multimodel database as a service
4 December 2024, siliconangle.com

SurrealDB is helping developers consolidate their databases
18 June 2024, TechCrunch

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provided by Google News



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