Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

neo4j VS ClickHouse

Compare neo4j VS ClickHouse and see what are their differences

neo4j logo neo4j

Meet Neo4j: The graph database platform powering today's mission-critical enterprise applications, including artificial intelligence, fraud detection and recommendations.

ClickHouse logo ClickHouse

ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.
  • neo4j Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09
  • ClickHouse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-06-18

neo4j

Website
neo4j.com
$ Details
Release Date
2007 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
City
San Mateo
Founder(s)
Emil Eifrem
Employees
500 - 999

neo4j features and specs

  • Graph DB

ClickHouse features and specs

  • High Performance
    ClickHouse is designed for fast processing of analytical queries, often performing significantly faster than traditional databases due to its columnar storage format and optimized query execution.
  • Scalability
    The system is built to handle extensive datasets by scaling horizontally through distributed cluster configurations, making it suitable for big data applications.
  • Real-time Data Ingestion
    ClickHouse supports real-time data ingestion and can immediately reflect changes in query results, which is valuable for use cases requiring instant data processing and analysis.
  • Cost Efficiency
    The open-source nature of ClickHouse makes it a cost-effective option, especially when compared to other commercial data warehouses.
  • SQL Compatibility
    ClickHouse features strong SQL support, which makes it easier for individuals with SQL expertise to transition and use the platform effectively.
  • Compression
    ClickHouse employs advanced compression algorithms that reduce storage requirements and improve query performance.

Possible disadvantages of ClickHouse

  • Complexity in Setup
    Setting up and managing ClickHouse, particularly in a distributed cluster environment, can be complex and require a higher level of expertise compared to some other database systems.
  • Limited Transaction Support
    ClickHouse is optimized for read-heavy operations and analytics but does not support full ACID transactions, which limits its use for certain transactional use cases.
  • Ecosystem and Tooling
    While the ecosystem is growing, ClickHouse still has fewer tools and third-party integrations compared to more mature databases, which can limit its utility in some environments.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running ClickHouse, especially for large datasets, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant memory and CPU resources.
  • Limited User Management
    The platform has relatively basic user management and security features, which may not meet the needs of enterprises with strict compliance and governance requirements.

Analysis of neo4j

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Neo4j is generally regarded as a good choice for applications where understanding and leveraging relationships between data points is crucial. Its mature ecosystem, active community, and extensive documentation further enhance its credibility and usability.

Why this product is good

  • Neo4j is considered a leading graph database platform that is highly effective for storing and querying complex data relationships. It is appreciated for its powerful query language, Cypher, useful for handling connected data. Its graph model is intuitive for users to understand and map to real-world applications, making it popular for use cases such as social networking, recommendation engines, and fraud detection.

Recommended for

  • Social network analysis
  • Recommendation systems
  • Fraud detection
  • Network and IT operations
  • Knowledge graphs
  • Data lineage tracking

Analysis of ClickHouse

Overall verdict

  • ClickHouse is a powerful and capable columnar DBMS that offers excellent performance for analytical workloads. Its open-source nature allows for flexibility and community-driven improvements, making it a strong option for organizations needing a scalable analytics platform.

Why this product is good

  • ClickHouse is considered a good choice for many use cases due to its high performance in processing large volumes of data and its efficiency in executing complex analytical queries. It is designed to work well with large datasets and provides real-time query capabilities, making it ideal for applications like business intelligence, web analytics, and IoT.

Recommended for

  • Large-scale data analysis
  • Real-time analytics dashboards
  • Businesses needing high-speed query performance
  • Web analytics platforms
  • IoT data processing
  • Financial industry for quick data aggregation

neo4j videos

All about GRAND Stack: GraphQL, React, Apollo, and Neo4j

More videos:

  • Review - Kevin Van Gundy | Building a Recommendation Engine with Neo4j and Python

ClickHouse videos

No ClickHouse videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to neo4j and ClickHouse)
Databases
54 54%
46% 46
Graph Databases
100 100%
0% 0
Relational Databases
0 0%
100% 100
NoSQL Databases
80 80%
20% 20

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare neo4j and ClickHouse

neo4j Reviews

Top 15 Free Graph Databases
Neo4j is an open-source graph database, implemented in Java described as embedded, disk-based, fully transactional Java persistence engine that stores data structured in graphs rather than in tables. Neo4j Community Edition
ArangoDB vs Neo4j - What you can't do with Neo4j
Multi-Model: Neo4j is a single-model graph database. It does not support any other data models. If your application requires a document or key/value store, you would have to use a second database technology to support it. Being multi-model, ArangoDB allows you to not only use one database for everything,but run ad hoc queries on data stored in different models.

ClickHouse Reviews

Rockset, ClickHouse, Apache Druid, or Apache Pinot? Which is the best database for customer-facing analytics?
ClickHouse is an open-source, column-oriented, distributed, and OLAP database that’s very easy to set up and maintain. “Because it’s columnar, it’s the best architectural approach for aggregations and for ‘sort by’ on more than one column. It also means that group by’s are very fast. It’s distributed, replication is asynchronous, and it’s OLAP—which means it’s meant for...
Source: embeddable.com
ClickHouse vs TimescaleDB
Recently, TimescaleDB published a blog comparing ClickHouse & TimescaleDB using timescale/tsbs, a timeseries benchmarking framework. I have some experience with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse but never got the chance to play with TimescaleDB. Some of the claims about TimescaleDB made in their post are very bold, that made me even more curious. I thought it’d be a great...
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
ClickHouse may be a great contender for moving analytical workloads from MongoDB. Much faster, and with JSON support and Nested Data Structures, it can be great choice for storing and analyzing document data.
Source: www.percona.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ClickHouse should be more popular than neo4j. It has been mentiond 57 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

neo4j mentions (34)

  • 6 retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques you should know
    The key difference lies in the retrieval mechanism. Vector databases focus on semantic similarity by comparing numerical embeddings, while graph databases emphasize relations between entities. Two solutions for graph databases are Neptune from Amazon and Neo4j. In a case where you need a solution that can accommodate both vector and graph, Weaviate fits the bill. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • LLM to extract and auto generate knowledge graph - step by step, in ~100 lines of python
    Neo4j is a leading graph database that is easy to use and powerful for knowledge graphs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • 10 Ways AI Can Speed Up your Mobile App Development
    Neo4j is one of the most popular graph databases. It offers powerful querying capabilities through its Cypher query language. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Databases in 2024: A Year in Review
    Great heads up. I wonder about graph databases. He mentioned and both include the graph use case and I wonder how they compare to . - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Installing Neo4j In Ubuntu
    The first blog in this series is to install neo4j - desktop version and few plugins which would help us to build an application. I am using Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

ClickHouse mentions (57)

  • Cross-Compiling Haskell under NixOS with Docker
    I attended the AWS Summit 2025 in Singapore. I enjoyed the event. There were booths from various companies which I found interesting, such as GitLab and ClickHouse. More importantly, I got to meet very interesting people. - Source: dev.to / about 23 hours ago
  • How to Build a Streaming Deduplication Pipeline with Kafka, GlassFlow, and ClickHouse
    ClickHouse: A fast columnar database. It will be our final destination for clean data. And, for simplicity in this tutorial, we'll cleverly use it as our "memory" or state store to remember which events we've already seen recently. - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
  • Why You Shouldn’t Invest In Vector Databases?
    In fact, even in the absence of these commercial databases, users can effortlessly install PostgreSQL and leverage its built-in pgvector functionality for vector search. PostgreSQL stands as the benchmark in the realm of open-source databases, offering comprehensive support across various domains of database management. It excels in transaction processing (e.g., CockroachDB), online analytics (e.g., DuckDB),... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Twitter's 600-Tweet Daily Limit Crisis: Soaring GCP Costs and the Open Source Fix Elon Musk Ignored
    ClickHouse: ClickHouse is an open-source columnar database management system designed for high-performance analytics. It excels at processing large volumes of data and offers real-time querying capabilities. It’s probably the world’s fastest real-time data analytics system: ClickHouse Benchmark. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • DeepSeek's Data Breach: A Wake-Up Call for AI Data Security
    Further investigation revealed that these ports provided direct access to a publicly exposed ClickHouse database—entirely unprotected and requiring no authentication. This discovery raised immediate security concerns, as ClickHouse is an open-source, columnar database management system designed for high-speed analytical queries on massive datasets. Originally developed by Yandex, ClickHouse is widely used for... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing neo4j and ClickHouse, you can also consider the following products

ArangoDB - A distributed open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

OrientDB - OrientDB - The World's First Distributed Multi-Model NoSQL Database with a Graph Database Engine.

Apache Doris - Apache Doris is an open-source real-time data warehouse for big data analytics.