Dgraph vs pg_ladybug

Both are property graph databases. Dgraph (2015-12, Apache-2.0, Go) ranks #3 this month; pg_ladybug (2026-07, PostgreSQL, C) ranks #156.

Attribute Dgraph #3 = Leader pg_ladybug #156 new Emerging
At a glance
Rank #3#156
Score 73.68.7
GitHub stars 21.8k5
Popularity 82.026.1
Activity 70.138.6
Community 73.534.6
Research 64.350.0
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.A PostgreSQL extension that embeds the LadybugDB engine to run Cypher queries from SQL. Registered Postgres tables act as node and relationship labels, and Ladybug's planner rewrites each pattern into a single SQL join executed natively by Postgres; Cypher can also run against Ladybug-native tables stored in the data directory.
Vendor IstariLadybugDB
Model Property GraphProperty Graph
Kind databaseextension
Category EnterpriseEmerging
First released 2015-122026-07
Status activeactive
License Apache-2.0PostgreSQL
Written in GoC
Query languages DQL, GraphQLopenCypher, SQL
gdotv support yesno

Feature scores — not surveyed for pg_ladybug

Feature Dgraphpg_ladybug
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 ✓—