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Neo4j Graph Database vs SQL Server comparison

 

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 (9th)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Databases solutions, they serve different purposes. Neo4j Graph Database is designed for NoSQL Databases and holds a mindshare of 5.9%, up 5.1% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.6% mindshare, down 17.0% since last year.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Neo4j Graph Database5.9%
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced13.2%
Redis8.5%
Other72.4%
NoSQL Databases
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.6%
Oracle Database10.5%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.3%
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

"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."
"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."
"Creates the ability to visualize outputs."
"As a graph database, I am surprised at their performance and response time."
"For now, the tool doesn't break down or stop, so it is quite stable."
"We have been very satisfied with its capabilities over the last decade."
"I love SQL Server's Common Table Expression, and in addition to that, I like its lead and lag functions, which helped us reduce a lot of code when comparing rows in SQL Server."
"The performance is great."
"The product can scale if a company needs it to."
"In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"The backup and recovery allow us to easily access previous 10 to 15 years of data, which is only possible using SQL Server due to its uniqueness in handling large data sets."
"The solution has proven to be very stable."
"Database developers who want to have a clear logical and physical understanding of database systems will no doubt benefit much from using SQL Server."
 

Cons

"So far, we have not had any issues and are happy with the product in general."
"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."
"The only problem is that the community is quite small."
"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."
"For me, when the tool was deployed on an on-premises model, it was a little bit difficult the first time."
"There are concerns about performance and whether the tool can necessarily scale to provide the solution."
"It could be more stable."
"SQL Server could improve by providing something similar to an interface or dashboard where a developer can do debugging, this would make a developer's work easier. Additionally, the optimization could be better. If there was an interface showing information needed for the optimization it would help because there can be some data loss making it difficult to optimize the SQL Server."
"The Always ON (High Availability) functionality is support only with the MS SQL enterprise edition."
"Query optimitzer could be simplified."
"The interface of the tool has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I would like to have the option to use fewer processors for certain tasks, thus reducing the licensing fee."
"Support could be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to see a better user interface and a familiar syntax."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is not expensive."
"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."
"For our purpose, we are not required to have a license for what we are using it for."
"There is a license required for this solution. One of the problems is for smaller businesses to purchases a license because it is expensive for a lot of them to afford."
"It is annual."
"Currently, almost all of my machines are in Azure and I think it is the best way of licensing now (VM+software)."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"The licensing is on an annual basis."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"We did a one-time payment. Its price, in general, can be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise118
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Neo4j?
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. Otherwi...
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...
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 MongoDB, Microsoft, Redis and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.