Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

neo4j VS RethinkDB

Compare neo4j VS RethinkDB 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.

RethinkDB logo RethinkDB

The open-source database for the realtime web
  • neo4j Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09
  • RethinkDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-13

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

RethinkDB features and specs

  • Real-time Capabilities
    RethinkDB offers built-in real-time capabilities that allow applications to subscribe to data changes. This makes it ideal for building real-time applications like live dashboards, multiplayer games, or collaborative tools.
  • Flexible Query Language
    RethinkDB's query language, ReQL, is highly flexible and allows for complex queries. It supports operations such as joins, aggregations, and transformations directly within the database.
  • Distributed Database
    RethinkDB is designed to be distributed from the ground up. It can automatically replicate data and distribute queries across multiple machines to improve scalability and fault tolerance.
  • Web-based Administration
    RethinkDB provides a user-friendly web-based administration interface that simplifies database management and monitoring. This interface makes it easier for developers and system administrators to manage their databases.
  • JSON Data Model
    RethinkDB uses JSON as its data model, which makes it easy to store and work with structured data. This can be especially beneficial for web developers who are used to working with JSON data.

Possible disadvantages of RethinkDB

  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to more established databases like MySQL or MongoDB, RethinkDB has a smaller ecosystem. This means fewer third-party tools, libraries, and community support are available.
  • Stalled Development
    After the company behind RethinkDB shut down in 2016, the development slowed significantly. Although the project was later open-sourced and the community keeps it alive, the updates and new features are not as frequent.
  • Learning Curve
    While ReQL is powerful, it can have a steep learning curve for developers who are new to RethinkDB or who are more familiar with SQL or other NoSQL query languages.
  • Resource Intensive
    RethinkDB can be more resource-intensive compared to some other databases. It may require more RAM and CPU resources to achieve optimal performance, which can be a consideration for resource-constrained environments.
  • Fewer Enterprise Features
    RethinkDB lacks some enterprise-level features such as advanced security options, comprehensive backup solutions, and robust user management compared to other database systems like MongoDB or PostgreSQL.

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

RethinkDB videos

Mike Glukhovsky - RethinkDB Year in Review 2015

More videos:

  • Review - RethinkDB for Windows: developer preview
  • Review - Michael Glukhovsky - Advancing the realtime web with RethinkDB

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to neo4j and RethinkDB)
Databases
69 69%
31% 31
Graph Databases
92 92%
8% 8
NoSQL Databases
71 71%
29% 29
Relational Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using neo4j and RethinkDB. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

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.

RethinkDB Reviews

12 Best Open-source Database Backend Server and Google Firebase Alternatives
RethinkDB is an open-source real-time database engine for creating modern reactive apps. It features a rich dashboard with real-time analytics and graphs, data explorer, simple learning curve, rich data models and queries with Geospatial queries support, and a large set of administration tools.The official binary packages for RethinkDB are available for: Ubuntu, Debian,...
Source: medevel.com
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
RethinkDB is the open-source, scalable DBMS system. It helps you to makes real-time building apps dramatically easier. This DBMS tool offers a flexible query language, intuitive operations, monitoring APIs, and is easy to set up and learn.
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, neo4j should be more popular than RethinkDB. It has been mentiond 34 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 / 8 days 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 / 9 days 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 / 2 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 / 4 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 / 9 months ago
View more

RethinkDB mentions (12)

  • Ask HN: How Can I Make My Front End React to Database Changes in Real-Time?
    Throwing RethinkDB in the mix as well. https://rethinkdb.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • You forget RethinkDB, it's a shame
    I've been poking around, testing and breaking database servers for a long time (more than 20 years today). But a few years ago I came across a jewel, the grail, one of the best solutions available. Under the radar, shunned for whatever reason, RethinkDB is nonetheless one of the finest database server projects I've ever tested. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Anyone Using RethinkDB in Production?
    RethinkDB[0] looks like a "too good to be true" type of database. Anyone using it in production? What is your experience like? What are the pros and cons? [0] https://rethinkdb.com. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Help wanted for a project idea - A multi-room live chat experience, similar to Twitch chat's functionality
    Since you’re not new to the field you might want to peek https://rethinkdb.com/ since it got picked up as an open source project. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Python, the usefulness of "dataclass"
    A Data Objects represents data which can be saved inside a database. This concept is in the heart of SQLAlchemy, but as the name should be obvious: it's for SQL Database (in general). Today, there are now document databases too (like MongoDB, ArangoDB, RethinkDB that I love so much, or even PostgreSQL). So, a "data" is like a "structured and typed document" that you save "as is". That's not the same paradigm, not... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

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

CouchDB - HTTP + JSON document database with Map Reduce views and peer-based replication

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

Apache Cassandra - The Apache Cassandra database is the right choice when you need scalability and high availability without compromising performance.