Neo4j
Ranked 2 of 8 graph databases by recommenders
People recommend it for graph-shaped data and the Cypher query language, though critics report slow deep traversals, operational burden and enterprise license costs.
People recommend it for graph-shaped data and the Cypher query language, though critics report slow deep traversals, operational burden and enterprise license costs.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 32%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Schema-free, flexible data model
“One of the best things about Neo4j compared to relational databases is the lack of a rigid schema.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “A type-safe, realtime collaborative Graph Database in a CRDT” “Working with relational databases after getting used to Neo4j feels like wearing handcuffs.”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “A type-safe, realtime collaborative Graph Database in a CRDT” Good fit for graph workloads
“for most use cases on Pg, you are better off just using JOINs or switch to Neo4j for your graph workloads”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Benchmarking SurrealDB 3.x vs. Postgres, Mongo, Neo4j and Redis (With Fsync)” “only ever found two domains where it excelled”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “YouTrackDB is a general-use object-oriented graph database” Easy to learn and use
“it really helped me understand how it works”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “I made my own Git” “I'm turning off my brain and using neo4j”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “Grafeo – A fast, lean, embeddable graph database built in Rust”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow, unpredictable query performance
“Neo4j’s record-oriented model performs reasonably for short traversals but degrades sharply on long paths”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: TuringDB – The fastest analytical in-memory graph database in C++” “once traversal depth exceeded 4-5 hops, latency became unpredictable regardless of data size”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Grafeo – A fast, lean, embeddable graph database built in Rust” “I still have nightmares with Cypher and neo4j's slowness.”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: BlitzGraph – Supabase for graphs, built for LLM agents” - Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: BlitzGraph – Supabase for graphs, built for LLM agents”
Needs a separate server to run
“Neo4j is great until you're building a CLI or serverless function and don't want to provision a server for it.”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: SparrowDB, SQLite of graph DB, written in Rust, Cypher compatible” “I didn't want to maintain a separate Neo4j instance”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: MemVault – Async GraphRAG Memory for AI Agents (Postgres/Redis)” Costly license and weaker ecosystem
“The price you pay in terms of worse ecosystem and less battle-tested maintenance tooling is not worth it to just have better syntax.”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “YouTrackDB is a general-use object-oriented graph database” “Neo4j license price is egregious for enterprise customers”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “YouTrackDB is a general-use object-oriented graph database” Overhyped graph-for-everything marketing
“Neo4j looooooves the "if you think about it, everything is graphs!" marketing maneuver.”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Your File System Is Already A Graph Database” “"Everything is graphs, so let's use a graph DBMS for anything" is a classic blunder”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Your File System Is Already A Graph Database”
Other graph databases people recommend
The four most recommended other graph databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LatticeDB | 9 | 0 | 100% | 1 | — | — |
| Neo4jThis page | 8 | 17 | 32% | 6 | — | — |
| LadybugDB | 7 | 3 | 70% | 5 | — | — |
| Kuzu graph database | 7 | 1 | 88% | 5 | — | — |
| Grafeo | 7 | 8 | 47% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
29 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“because I really like Cypher”
“Big weakness of Neo4j, etc...?”
“they're really hard to get right with unstructured data and introduce more baggage than they're worth for RAG.”
“We were already well on our way of dumping Neo4J due to performance/operational/architectural reasons”
“The price you pay in terms of worse ecosystem and less battle-tested maintenance tooling is not worth it to just have better syntax.”
“only ever found two domains where it excelled”
“decide to become some kind of paid platform with a client-server protocol and proprietary query DSL”
“but for that little performance, that's crazy.”
“Neo4j license price is egregious for enterprise customers”
“Don't get me started on 80% of all deployment uses of neo4j...”
“reminiscent of neo4j, which is surely not a tool anyone serious should copy from outright in 2026”
“I still have nightmares with Cypher and neo4j's slowness.”
“neo4j is a pain as murmansk said”
“Neo4j was freaking slow when I tried to use it.”
“If you've tried it, you know”
“Neo4j has been the master of flip flops”
“for most use cases on Pg, you are better off just using JOINs or switch to Neo4j for your graph workloads”
“Working with relational databases after getting used to Neo4j feels like wearing handcuffs.”
“One of the best things about Neo4j compared to relational databases is the lack of a rigid schema.”
“"Everything is graphs, so let's use a graph DBMS for anything" is a classic blunder”
“Neo4j looooooves the "if you think about it, everything is graphs!" marketing maneuver.”
“Neo4j is great until you're building a CLI or serverless function and don't want to provision a server for it.”
“once traversal depth exceeded 4-5 hops, latency became unpredictable regardless of data size”
“I'm turning off my brain and using neo4j”
“we were treating Neo4J as a twisted NoSQL/SQL interpretation”
“Neo4j’s record-oriented model performs reasonably for short traversals but degrades sharply on long paths”
“it really helped me understand how it works”
“I didn't want to maintain a separate Neo4j instance”
“carefully crafting scaling claims that are so narrowly qualified as to be inapplicable to anything real”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.