Established graph databases compared
Graph databases with wide adoption and a long production track record.
20 active established graph databases are in the catalogue. They are written mostly in Java and C, 14 are open source, and 11 carry survey feature scores. Apache Giraph, FlockDB, Redland are no longer active and listed separately below.
| Attribute |  Neo4j |  FalkorDB |  AllegroGraph |  TigerGraph |  JanusGraph |  Apache HugeGraph |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||||||
| Rank | #1 | #8 | #22 | #23 | #35 | #37 |
| Score | 78.8 | 62.2 | 57.5 | 57.1 | 53.2 | 52.0 |
| GitHub stars | 17k | 4.9k | — | — | 5.8k | 3.1k |
| Popularity | 93.8 | 58.9 | 57.4 | 40.3 | 79.3 | 75.8 |
| Activity | 82.8 | 79.5 | 92.8 | 89.6 | 40.9 | 45.0 |
| Community | 77.2 | 66.2 | 36.6 | 57.4 | 37.1 | 38.7 |
| Research | 98.6 | 54.9 | 56.0 | 60.6 | 63.4 | 50.4 |
| Fundamentals | ||||||
| Description | A property graph database that stores data as fixed-size records in linked lists for index-free adjacency traversal. Offers community and commercial editions with an extensive graph algorithms library. | A property graph database that runs as a Redis module, formerly RedisGraph. Uses GraphBLAS sparse matrix operations for query execution, enabling parallel graph traversal. | An RDF triple store with built-in ontology reasoning capabilities. Supports OWL2 RL materialized reasoning for inferring new triples and federated queries across distributed stores. | A distributed property graph database (formerly GraphSQL) built for massively parallel processing and graph analytics. Uses the SQL-like GSQL query language and supports ACID transactions. Available in developer, cloud, and enterprise editions. | An open-source distributed property graph database forked from the Titan codebase. Supports pluggable storage backends (Cassandra, HBase, BerkeleyDB) with ACID transactions and native TinkerPop integration. | A TinkerPop 3-compliant property graph database with a pluggable storage layer supporting RocksDB, Cassandra, and HBase. Uses edge-cut partitioning for distributed graph processing. |
| Vendor | Neo4j Inc | FalkorDB | Franz Inc | TigerGraph | The Linux Foundation | Apache Software Foundation |
| Model | Property Graph | Property Graph | RDF | Property Graph | Property Graph | Property Graph |
| Kind | database | database | database | database | database | database |
| Category | Established | Established | Established | Established | Established | Established |
| First released | 2007 | 2018 | 2004 | 2017 | 2017-04 | 2018-08 |
| Status | active | active | active | active | active | active |
| License | GPL-3.0 | SSPL-1.0 | Proprietary | Proprietary | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | C | Common Lisp | C++ | Java | Java |
| Query languages | Cypher, GQL | openCypher | SPARQL, Prolog | GSQL | Gremlin | Gremlin, openCypher |
| gdotv support | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | no |
Feature scores 37 of 46 rows differ
| Feature | Neo4j | FalkorDB | AllegroGraph | TigerGraph | JanusGraph | Apache HugeGraph |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community & Business | ||||||
| Active development | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Commercial support | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · |
| Live community | ✓ | ✓ | · | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open Source | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pricing | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | · |
| Trendiness | ✓ | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | ✓ |
| Deployment | ||||||
| Containerization | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Work as dedicated instance | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Work as embedded | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | ✓ | · |
| Testing in-memory version | ✓ | ✓ | · | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Platform | ||||||
| Operating on Linux | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Operating on Windows | ✓ | 0.75 | · | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ |
| SaaS offering | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | ✓ | · |
| Operations | ||||||
| Automatic updates | · | · | · | · | · | ✓ |
| Client side caching | · | 0.5 | ✓ | · | · | · |
| Data versioning support | · | · | ✓ | · | · | · |
| Live backups | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Distribution | ||||||
| Cluster Re-balancing | · | · | ✓ | · | · | ✓ |
| Data Distribution | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| High-Availability | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Query Distribution | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ |
| Replication support | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Developer Experience | ||||||
| Data types defined | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.5 |
| Logging/Auditing | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Object-Graph Mapper | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ✓ |
| Reactive programming | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | · | · | · |
| Documentation up-to-date | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 0.75 | 0.75 | ✓ |
| Binary protocol | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | ✓ |
| CLI | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GUI | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ |
| Data Model | ||||||
| Multi-database | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · |
| Graph-native data | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| REST API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Query Language | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Transactions | ||||||
| Granular locking | ✓ | · | · | · | 0.5 | ✓ |
| Multiple isolation levels | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Read committed transaction | ✓ | · | · | 0.5 | 0.5 | ✓ |
| Transaction support | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Schema & Security | ||||||
| Constraints | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | · |
| Schema support | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Secondary indexes | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ |
| Server side procedures | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · |
| Triggers | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | · | 0.5 | · |
| Authentication | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Authorization | ✓ | 0.5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data encryption | · | 0.5 | · | ✓ | · | · |
All 20 engines
| Name | Vendor | Model | Category | GitHub stars | License | Written in | Query languages | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache AGE | Apache Software Foundation | Property Graph | Established | 4.7k | Apache-2.0 | C | openCypher, SQL | #9 |
| TinkerGraph | Apache TinkerPop | Property Graph | Established | 2.1k | Apache-2.0 | Java | Gremlin | #16 |
| Ontop | Ontopic | RDF | Established | 895 | Apache-2.0 | Java | SPARQL | #19 |
| Eclipse RDF4J | Eclipse Foundation | RDF | Established | 409 | BSD-3-Clause | Java | SPARQL | #25 |
| RDFLib | RDFLib Community | RDF | Established | 2.5k | BSD-3-Clause | Python | SPARQL | #27 |
| Apache Jena Fuseki | Apache Software Foundation | RDF | Established | 1.4k | Apache-2.0 | Java | SPARQL | #28 |
| GUN | GUN | Property Graph | Established | 19.1k | MIT | JavaScript | Custom API | #45 |
| DataStax Enterprise | IBM | Property Graph | Established | — | Proprietary | Java | Gremlin, CQL | #47 |
| TuGraph | Ant Group | Property Graph | Established | 1.8k | Apache-2.0 | C++ | openCypher, GQL | #48 |
| NebulaGraph | Vesoft | Property Graph | Established | 12.3k | Apache-2.0 | C++ | nGQL | #49 |
| Gaffer | GCHQ | Other | Established | 1.8k | Apache-2.0 | Java | Custom API | #54 |
| TAO | Meta | Other | Established | — | Proprietary | C++ | TAO API | #65 |
| Kinetica | Kinetica | Multiple | Established | — | Proprietary | C++ | SQL | #68 |
| Sparksee | Sparsity Technologies | Property Graph | Established | — | Proprietary | C++ | openCypher | #78 |
No longer active
- Apache Giraph — Retired to the Apache Attic in October 2023. Repository is archived and read-only.
- FlockDB — Archived and unmaintained since 2017. Twitter is no longer responding to issues or PRs.
- Redland — Mature project with periodic maintenance. Last release 2.0.18 in October 2024.
- BlazeGraph — Last release in 2019. Project largely dormant, though still used by Wikidata.