Bighorn vs Dgraph
Both are property graph databases. Bighorn (2025-10, MIT, C++) ranks #89 this month; Dgraph (2015-12, Apache-2.0, Go) ranks #3.
| Attribute | Bighorn | Dgraph |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Rank | #89 | #3 |
| Score | 40.5 | 67.6 |
| GitHub stars | 133 | 21.8k |
| Popularity | 35.4 | 79.7 |
| Activity | 42.2 | 77.2 |
| Community | 30.6 | 67.3 |
| Research | — | 62.3 |
| Fundamentals | ||
| Description | A community fork of Kuzu maintained by Kineviz. An embedded property graph database with openCypher support, adding vector search and full-text search capabilities. Integrates with GraphXR visualization. | A distributed graph database with horizontal scaling and ACID transactions. Uses its own query language (DQL) derived from GraphQL, with automatic shard rebalancing across cluster nodes. |
| Vendor | Kineviz | Istari |
| Model | Property Graph | Property Graph |
| Kind | embedded | database |
| Category | Emerging | Enterprise |
| First released | 2025-10 | 2015-12 |
| Status | active | active |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Query languages | openCypher | DQL, GraphQL |
| gdotv support | no | yes |
Feature scores — not surveyed for Bighorn
| Feature | Bighorn | Dgraph |
|---|---|---|
| Community & Business | ||
| Active development | — | ✓ |
| Commercial support | — | ✓ |
| Live community | — | 0.5 |
| Open Source | — | ✓ |
| Pricing | — | · |
| Trendiness | — | 0.25 |
| Deployment | ||
| Containerization | — | ✓ |
| Work as dedicated instance | — | ✓ |
| Work as embedded | — | · |
| Testing in-memory version | — | ✓ |
| Platform | ||
| Operating on Linux | — | ✓ |
| Operating on Windows | — | ✓ |
| SaaS offering | — | ✓ |
| Operations | ||
| Automatic updates | — | · |
| Client side caching | — | · |
| Data versioning support | — | · |
| Live backups | — | ✓ |
| Distribution | ||
| Cluster Re-balancing | — | ✓ |
| Data Distribution | — | ✓ |
| High-Availability | — | ✓ |
| Query Distribution | — | ✓ |
| Replication support | — | ✓ |
| Developer Experience | ||
| Data types defined | — | ✓ |
| Logging/Auditing | — | 0.5 |
| Object-Graph Mapper | — | · |
| Reactive programming | — | · |
| Documentation up-to-date | — | 0.5 |
| Binary protocol | — | ✓ |
| CLI | — | · |
| GUI | — | ✓ |
| Data Model | ||
| Multi-database | — | · |
| Graph-native data | — | ✓ |
| REST API | — | ✓ |
| Query Language | — | ✓ |
| Transactions | ||
| Granular locking | — | · |
| Multiple isolation levels | — | · |
| Read committed transaction | — | · |
| Transaction support | — | ✓ |
| Schema & Security | ||
| Constraints | — | · |
| Schema support | — | ✓ |
| Secondary indexes | — | ✓ |
| Server side procedures | — | · |
| Triggers | — | · |
| Authentication | — | ✓ |
| Authorization | — | ✓ |
| Data encryption | — | ✓ |
Links
- Bighorn · website · github · full profile
- Dgraph · website · github · full profile