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Neo4j Graph Database vs SQL Server comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Neo4j Graph Database
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (10th)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Databases solutions, they serve different purposes. Neo4j Graph Database is designed for NoSQL Databases and holds a mindshare of 6.0%, up 5.7% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.3% mindshare, down 15.3% since last year.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Neo4j Graph Database6.0%
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced12.7%
Cassandra8.3%
Other73.0%
NoSQL Databases
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Oracle Database10.2%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.9%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

RT
VP odfTechnology at Enterpi Software Solutions Private Limited
Delivers superior search and data aggregation capabilities
Neo4j helps with advanced search needs, providing good search results and aggregates compared to MongoDB. Aggregating with MongoDB can be difficult; however, with Neo4j, it's easier. Aggregating data, backing up, and creating new clusters are user-friendly from the back end. In DevOps web deployment, we noticed no database issues. We created Docker instances and set them up efficiently, managing databases up to 50 gigabytes.
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"For now, the tool doesn't break down or stop, so it is quite stable."
"Neo4j helps with advanced search needs, providing good search results and aggregates compared to MongoDB."
"The graph modeling paradigm suits our data set well, where there may be orders of magnitude more connections between data points than data points themselves."
"It is good for search-based tasks, providing solid search results and aggregate results."
"Enables people to understand what the business problem is and how the technology helps."
"The solution's best feature is how it differs from traditional SQL databases. It's hard to map people and find those near me in SQL, which requires long, complex queries. Neo4j Graph Database makes this easier with simpler queries. It also supports more data types, like JSON, which SQL doesn't."
"It enables circumstances which would have been a complex problem to be simplified."
"As a graph database, I am surprised at their performance and response time."
"I would recommend SQL Server for its stability, scalability, and ease of use."
"The solution seems to be pretty flexible."
"I use this solution as our data warehouse; we use the reports, data analysis, and for connecting our databases to multiple resources."
"The availability is the most valuable feature. It has high availability. It also has good performance."
"We use it as part of our product, so it is helpful for us."
"The pricing of the solution is okay. It's less expensive than Oracle, for example."
"It's the right tool for production-ready or enabled databases."
"SQL is stable."
 

Cons

"There are things I found unintuitive or difficult to understand, however I can't say this is a deficiency in the product and likely more a function of my relatively low experience."
"There are concerns about performance and whether the tool can necessarily scale to provide the solution."
"So far, we have not had any issues and are happy with the product in general."
"For me, when the tool was deployed on an on-premises model, it was a little bit difficult the first time."
"The tool could improve by having more resources, especially for Golang, which we use. It lacks good basic libraries and doesn't have an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) tool, which many NoSQL databases have. We thought about building an ORM for the Neo4j Graph Database but are too busy."
"The only problem is that the community is quite small."
"The only people that can use it directly are developers."
"Indexing, as well as integration, are areas of this product that need improvement."
"The scalability is not very good because when you add processors to the machine, the price of the license goes up."
"The Management Studio is a pretty heavy piece of software, and it's sometimes slow. I would recommend making an express version of the Management Studio, which is lighter and has fewer features but is a little faster."
"Technical support could be faster."
"SQL Server could be more robust than one of its competitors."
"Indexing, execution plans, and the SQL Server Management Studio performance."
"We would like to have a common storage option in the SQL Server. This option is available in Oracle Database. It would be great if Microsoft could create something like a columnstore that has not only indexing but also tables for common storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source so that you can use it for free. They also offer an enterprise version with its billing. If your company is earning well, I suggest using the enterprise version. Otherwise, you can deploy it on your own cloud and pay based on usage."
"The tool is not expensive."
"Some of our clients purchase the license and others do not, they use Express SQL Server."
"I don't need a license for it as I will be migrating to Office 365."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"It costs a lot."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"There is a license required for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
10%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise119
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Neo4j Graph Database?
The only problem is that the community is quite small.
What is your primary use case for Neo4j Graph Database?
We have used Neo4j in microservices. In one of the microservices, we used Neo4j since we have some requirements similar to MongoDB plus Elasticsearch. It performs both functions. Instead of doing t...
What advice do you have for others considering Neo4j?
We have used both editions without any difficulty. In the fourth year, they provided the software, and we installed three additional community editions with no issues. Backing up required some effo...
Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Walmart, Telenor, Wazoku, Adidas, Cerved, GameSys, eBay, Schleich, ICIJ, die Bayerisch, Megree, InfoJobs, LinkedIn
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, MongoDB, Redis and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.