Dgraph vs HelixDB
Dgraph is a property graph database; HelixDB is a other database. Dgraph (2015, Apache-2.0, Go) ranks #3 this month; HelixDB (2025-02, AGPL-3.0, Rust) ranks #15.
| Attribute |  Dgraph |  HelixDB |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Rank | #3 | #15 |
| Score | 66.5 | 60.0 |
| GitHub stars | 21.8k | 5.7k |
| Popularity | 76.7 | 65.8 |
| Activity | 78.5 | 74.0 |
| Community | 67.3 | 59.3 |
| Research | 57.7 | 50.4 |
| Fundamentals | ||
| Description | 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. | An open-source graph-vector database combining graph traversals with vector and keyword search, targeting AI and RAG applications. |
| Vendor | Istari | HelixDB |
| Model | Property Graph | Other |
| Kind | database | database |
| Category | Enterprise | Emerging |
| First released | 2015 | 2025-02 |
| Status | active | active |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Query languages | DQL, GraphQL | HelixQL |
| gdotv support | yes | no |
Feature scores — not surveyed for HelixDB
| Feature | Dgraph | HelixDB |
|---|---|---|
| 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
- Dgraph · website · github · full profile
- HelixDB · website · github · full profile