Kuzu vs TAO
Kuzu is a property graph database; TAO is a other database. Kuzu (2022-11, MIT, C++) ranks #17 this month; TAO (2012-05, Proprietary, C++) ranks #66.
| Attribute | Kuzu | TAO |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Rank | #17 | #66 |
| Score | 59.3 | 45.2 |
| GitHub stars | 4k | — |
| Popularity | 64.2 | 34.9 |
| Activity | 42.8 | 98.3 |
| Community | 65.1 | 51.2 |
| Research | 95.6 | — |
| Fundamentals | ||
| Description | An embedded property graph database built for fast analytical workloads, developed as the successor to Graphflow. Archived in October 2025 after acquisition by Apple. Forked as LadybugDB and Bighorn. | A distributed graph store built by Meta (Facebook) for serving the social graph at scale. Shards data across MySQL instances with a caching layer, later extended with the RAMP-TAO protocol for geo-distributed atomic visibility. Not available as a standalone product. |
| Vendor | Kuzu Inc (acquired by Apple) | Meta |
| Model | Property Graph | Other |
| Kind | embedded | database |
| Category | Emerging | Established |
| First released | 2022-11 | 2012-05 |
| Status | deprecated — Acquired by Apple in October 2025. Repository archived. Continued as LadybugDB and Bighorn forks. | active |
| License | MIT | Proprietary |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Query languages | openCypher | TAO API |
| gdotv support | yes | no |
Feature scores — not surveyed for Kuzu
| Feature | Kuzu | TAO |
|---|---|---|
| Community & Business | ||
| Active development | — | · |
| Commercial support | — | · |
| Live community | — | · |
| Open Source | — | · |
| Pricing | — | · |
| Trendiness | — | · |
| 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 | — | · |
| Object-Graph Mapper | — | · |
| Reactive programming | — | · |
| Documentation up-to-date | — | · |
| 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
- Kuzu · website · github · full profile
- TAO · website · full profile