Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

TimescaleDB VS neo4j

Compare TimescaleDB VS neo4j and see what are their differences

TimescaleDB logo TimescaleDB

TimescaleDB is a time-series SQL database providing fast analytics, scalability, with automated data management on a proven storage engine.

neo4j logo neo4j

Meet Neo4j: The graph database platform powering today's mission-critical enterprise applications, including artificial intelligence, fraud detection and recommendations.
  • TimescaleDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-23
  • neo4j Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09

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

TimescaleDB features and specs

  • Scalability
    TimescaleDB offers excellent horizontal and vertical scalability, which allows it to handle large volumes of data efficiently. Its architecture is designed to accommodate growth by distributing and efficiently managing data shards.
  • Time-Series Data Optimization
    Specifically optimized for time-series data, TimescaleDB provides features like hypertables and continuous aggregates that speed up queries and optimize storage for time-based data.
  • SQL Compatibility
    As an extension of PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB offers full SQL support, making it familiar to developers and allowing easy integration with existing SQL-based systems and applications.
  • Retention Policies
    TimescaleDB includes built-in data retention policies, enabling automatic management of historical data and freeing up storage by performing automatic data roll-ups or deletes.
  • Integration with the PostgreSQL Ecosystem
    It benefits from PostgreSQL's rich ecosystem of extensions, tools, and optimizations, allowing for versatile use cases beyond just time-series data while maintaining robust reliability and performance.

Possible disadvantages of TimescaleDB

  • Learning Curve
    Although it’s SQL-based, developers might face a learning curve to fully leverage TimescaleDB's time-series specific features such as hypertables and specific optimization techniques.
  • Limited Write Scalability
    While it's scalable, TimescaleDB might face challenges with extremely high-throughput write workloads compared to some NoSQL time-series databases, which are specifically built for such tasks.
  • Dependency on PostgreSQL
    As it operates as a PostgreSQL extension, any limitations and issues in PostgreSQL might directly affect TimescaleDB's performance and capabilities.
  • Complexity in Setup for High Availability
    Setting up TimescaleDB with high availability and distributed systems might introduce complexities, particularly for organizations that are not well-versed in PostgreSQL clustering and replication strategies.
  • Storage Overhead
    The additional storage features add an overhead, which means that while it adds value with its optimizations, users need to manage storage resources effectively, especially in environments with very large datasets.

neo4j features and specs

  • Graph DB

TimescaleDB videos

Rearchitecting a SQL Database for Time-Series Data | TimescaleDB

More videos:

  • Review - Visualizing Time-Series Data with TimescaleDB and Grafana

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to TimescaleDB and neo4j)
Databases
24 24%
76% 76
Time Series Database
100 100%
0% 0
Graph Databases
0 0%
100% 100
Relational Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

TimescaleDB Reviews

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...
4 Best Time Series Databases To Watch in 2019
The Guardian did a very nice article explaining on they went from MongoDB to PostgresSQL in the favor of scaling their architecture and encrypting their content at REST. As you can tell, big companies are relying on SQL-constraint systems (with a cloud architecture of course) to ensure system reliability and accessibility. I believe that PostgresSQL will continue to grow, so...
Source: medium.com
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
TimescaleDB If on the other hand you are storing time series data in MongoDB, then TimescaleDB might be a good fit.
Source: www.percona.com

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.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, neo4j should be more popular than TimescaleDB. 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.

TimescaleDB mentions (5)

  • Ask HN: Does anyone use InfluxDB? Or should we switch?
    (:alert: I work for Timescale :alert:) It's funny, we hear this more and more "we did some research and landed on Influx and ... Help it's confusing". We actually wrote an article about what we think, you can find it here: https://www.timescale.com/blog/what-influxdb-got-wrong/ As the QuestDB folks mentioned if you want a drop in replacement for Influx then they would be an option, it kinda sounds that's not what... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Best small scale dB for time series data?
    If you like PostgreSQL, I'd recommend starting with that. Additionally, you can try TimescaleDB (it's a PostgreSQL extension for time-series data with full SQL support) it has many features that are useful even on a small-scale, things like:. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Quick n Dirty IoT sensor & event storage (Django backend)
    I have built a Django server which serves up the JSON configuration, and I'd also like the server to store and render sensor graphs & event data for my Thing. In future, I'd probably use something like timescale.com as it is a database suited for this application. However right now I only have a handful of devices, and don't want to spend a lot of time configuring my back end when the Thing is my focus. So I'm... Source: over 3 years ago
  • How fast and scalable is TimescaleDB compare to a NoSQL Database?
    I've seen a lot of benchmark results on timescale on the web but they all come from timescale.com so I just want to ask if those are accurate. Source: over 3 years ago
  • The State of PostgreSQL 2021 Survey is now open!
    Ryan from Timescale here. We (TimescaleDB) just launched the second annual State of PostgreSQL survey, which asks developers across the globe about themselves, how they use PostgreSQL, their experiences with the community, and more. Source: about 4 years ago

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 / 7 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 / 8 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

What are some alternatives?

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

InfluxData - Scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics.

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

Prometheus - An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.

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

VictoriaMetrics - Fast, easy-to-use, and cost-effective time series database

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