This guide compares twelve graph databases for buyers choosing where connected data should live.
We rank on the five tests: setup effort, the real bill once cloud tiers and licences apply, how the graph leaves again, independence from a single cloud, and fit. Single-product vendors come first, and cloud-bound services come last.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What graph databases software does
A graph database stores records as nodes and the relationships between them as edges, so queries can follow connections across many hops without the table joins a relational database needs.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each graph databases tool is built for. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Request Unit billing for throughput and storage, published; free tier of throughput and storage per account
Yes
Azure shops already running Cosmos DB who need a Gremlin API
Anyone who needs Cypher, SPARQL or graph analytics
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
An in-memory Cypher graph database priced by memory alone
Ranked #1 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourcePublished pricingEurope
Memgraph is the simplest bill in this category to reason about: licensed memory is the meter, and the vendor states that queries, compute, replicas and algorithms are not charged on top.
The Community Edition covers ACID transactions, replication, Cypher, Kafka connectors and vector search, so a proof of concept costs nothing. Production needs Enterprise for SSO, multi-tenancy and failover, which is quoted. Size the working set before you sign.
What stands out
In-memory
Cypher
Source available
Where it costs you
Enterprise prices are not published; you must talk to sales
Community Edition lacks the Enterprise features such as SSO, multi-tenancy and automatic failover
Because the engine is in-memory, the graph size is bounded by the memory you license
Right for
Teams running real-time Cypher workloads who want a single, memory-based price
Wrong for
Graphs far larger than the memory you can afford
United KingdomFree Community Edition; Enterprise priced by memory capacity, quoted; 30-day Enterprise trial on request
A Cypher graph database aimed at GraphRAG, with a free tier
Ranked #2 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourcePublished pricingNorth America
FalkorDB is the cheapest way here to put a graph behind an LLM application: multi-graph and multi-tenancy are in the free tier from day one, and the paid ladder is published by storage size.
It can also be self-hosted from a Docker image. The gaps are plain on the pricing page: TLS and backups begin on the Startup plan, and clustering and high availability on Pro. The licence is SSPL, so read it before reselling.
What stands out
Source available
GraphRAG
Cypher
Where it costs you
The free tier has no TLS, clustering, high availability or backups
The Server Side Public License restricts offering the database as a service, which matters to platform builders
Pro-level clustering and high availability require a paid tier
Right for
Small teams building GraphRAG prototypes who want a published per-GB price
Wrong for
Regulated workloads that need TLS and backups at no cost
United StatesFree tier; paid cloud plans priced per GB of storage, published; Enterprise tailored
The original property graph database with Cypher and a cloud service
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourcePublished pricingNorth America
The default answer for a reason: Cypher was written for Neo4j, the AuraDB free tier needs no card, and the tiers run from learning to a 99.95 percent SLA on Business Critical.
Prices are per GB per hour, so a large graph on Business Critical adds up fast. Self-hosting production means Enterprise or Infinigraph, both quoted. Expect to compare it with Memgraph on cost.
What stands out
Cypher
Managed cloud
Open source Community Edition
Where it costs you
Community Edition is positioned for non-production projects, so production self-hosting means a quoted Enterprise licence
The AuraDB free tier limits the number of nodes and relationships
Professional support is best-effort; the one-hour response belongs to Business Critical
Right for
Teams that need the largest pool of Cypher skills and a managed cloud
Wrong for
Buyers who want a self-hosted production database without a licence
United StatesFree AuraDB tier; Professional and Business Critical billed per GB per hour, published; Enterprise quoted
TypeDB asks for a schema first and then checks data against it, which is the opposite of the schema-light habit of most graph stores. That helps when the domain has strict rules, and costs time when it does not.
Pricing is published as 10 GB on Explore, hourly billing on Launch up to 1 TB, and custom Enterprise. Failover begins on Launch, so Explore is for experiments only.
What stands out
Open source
TypeQL
Strongly typed
Where it costs you
TypeQL is proprietary to TypeDB, so queries do not port to Cypher or SPARQL databases
Explore has no failover and no uptime SLA
On-premises and air-gapped deployment are Enterprise-only
Right for
Teams modelling strict schemas and inference who accept learning a new query language
Wrong for
Teams with existing Cypher or SPARQL queries to reuse
United KingdomFree Explore tier; Launch billed hourly, published; Enterprise custom
A distributed Apache 2.0 graph database built for very large graphs
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Open sourcePricing on requestElsewhere
The Apache 2.0 licence is the most permissive in this category, and the repository describes RAFT-based consistency and separate storage and compute for large graphs.
The open source edition is a subset: role-based access control and other enterprise features sit in the paid edition. Procurement should ask who the contracting entity is, because the site lists none and the terms name Vesoft Inc. under Chinese law.
What stands out
Open source
Distributed
OpenCypher
Where it costs you
No prices are published for Enterprise or Cloud
The vendor does not state its country of establishment
The open source edition carries a subset of core features
Right for
Teams with billions of edges who want an Apache 2.0 core
Wrong for
Buyers who need a stated vendor location before signing
Not stated by the vendorOpen source edition; Enterprise quoted; Cloud pay-as-you-go with 14-day trial
A multi-model database where graph edges are one data type
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierSelf-hostablePublished pricingEurope
SurrealDB suits an application that already needs documents, relations and some graph traversal and would rather run one system. Edges carry properties, and the docs separate record links from graph relations, which you must choose between early.
The cloud price is published per instance hour with a 1 GB free tier. Do not buy it for graph analytics; the engine is general-purpose first.
What stands out
Multi-model
SurrealQL
Source available
Where it costs you
Graph is one of several models, so deep traversal and graph algorithms are not its focus
Core code is under BSL 1.1, not a free software licence
Scale plan requires a minimum of three nodes
Right for
Application teams that want documents and graph edges in one store
Wrong for
Analytics teams that depend on graph algorithms at scale
United KingdomFree 1 GB cloud tier; Start and Scale billed hourly, published; self-hosted Enterprise quoted
A parallel graph database for deep traversal and analytics at scale
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
TigerGraph is built for graphs where the question is many hops deep, and it lists fraud detection, supply chain and cybersecurity among its uses. The Community Edition is generous at 300 GB.
The price of getting there is GSQL: openCypher is supported, but the deepest features are written in the vendor's own language. Savanna lists per-GB monthly rates, so cost scales with data volume, not with queries.
What stands out
GSQL
Self-managed
Cloud trial
Where it costs you
GSQL is proprietary, so queries written in it do not move to other products
Community Edition is capped at 300 GB
The Enterprise Edition price is not published
Right for
Teams running multi-hop analytics on large graphs, such as fraud detection
Wrong for
Small teams who only want standard Cypher and nothing proprietary
United StatesFree Community Edition up to 300 GB; Savanna cloud priced per GB per month, published; Enterprise quoted
A multi-model graph, document and vector database, now branded Arango
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Pricing on requestEurope
Arango sells the same engine in three packages: ArangoDB, a Platform Suite with governance and visualisation, and the Contextual Data Platform with GraphRAG and GPU acceleration.
That is useful if you want one vendor for document and graph. It makes the choice harder than at single-product vendors, since every tier is quoted. Check the dataset limit on the Community Edition before building a pilot on it.
What stands out
Multi-model
Self-managed
GraphRAG
Where it costs you
The pricing page shows no prices; pricing is by request
The Community Edition has a dataset size limit and is described for evaluation
The product line now spans three tiers, which makes the buying decision harder to read
Right for
Teams wanting graph, document and vector queries together in one engine
Wrong for
Buyers who need a published price before a call
GermanyQuoted per organisation; Community Edition for evaluation, Enterprise for production
An RDF and SPARQL semantic graph database from Graphwise
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierSelf-hostablePublished pricingEurope
GraphDB is the choice when the graph is a set of RDF statements and reasoning over them is the point: the documentation describes inferencing at scale and compatibility with the RDF4J framework.
The Free edition is a real way to start, but queries run one at a time. Enterprise adds connectors for Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr and Kafka and is priced by sales. Property graph teams should look elsewhere.
What stands out
RDF
SPARQL
Cloud and on-premises
Where it costs you
It uses RDF and SPARQL, not the property graph model
Free edition runs one query at a time
Enterprise pricing is not published
Right for
Teams building ontology-driven knowledge graphs on RDF with reasoning over statements
Wrong for
Developers who want a property graph with Cypher
BulgariaFree edition limited to single parallel queries; Enterprise licence quoted by sales
A knowledge graph platform that virtualises data instead of copying it
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierSelf-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
Stardog's selling point is leaving data where it is and querying across it, with virtualisation and materialisation as options. That is a different job from storing a graph.
Stardog Free renews yearly and may be used commercially, but lacks the pieces that make a deployment production-grade. Enterprise brings support and a named customer success contact. Price is set on a call, so budget time for the process.
What stands out
Knowledge graph
SPARQL
Virtualisation
Where it costs you
Stardog Free has no high availability, caching, backups or LDAP integration
Enterprise pricing requires a call
Cypher is not among the query languages the platform page lists
Right for
Enterprises federating many separate data sources into one semantic layer without copying
Wrong for
Developers who want a simple graph store with Cypher
United StatesFree renewable one-year licence; Enterprise licensing quoted on a call
AWS's managed graph service supporting Gremlin, openCypher and SPARQL
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Neptune is the low-friction pick for an AWS shop: the same graph can be queried with Gremlin, openCypher or SPARQL, and replicas, backups and encryption are handled for you.
The pricing page lists several meters, so model instance hours, storage and I/O together, or choose I/O-Optimized or Serverless. The trade is that the graph lives in AWS only, and exit means exporting it to something else.
What stands out
Managed only
Gremlin and SPARQL
Serverless option
Where it costs you
It exists only as an AWS-hosted service, so there is no self-hosted option
The bill has several meters: instances or capacity units, storage and I/O
It is a managed engine, with fewer graph-specific tools than the specialists
Right for
Teams already on AWS who want Gremlin, openCypher or SPARQL as a service
Wrong for
Buyers who want to run the database outside AWS
United StatesOn-demand instance hours, storage and I/O, published; Serverless billed per capacity unit; 30-day free allowance
Microsoft's managed Gremlin API on top of Cosmos DB
Ranked #12 of 12 in Best Graph Databases in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
This is a Gremlin API on a general-purpose Azure database, and Microsoft says so: the overview recommends Cosmos DB for NoSQL for high-scale scenarios and Graph in Microsoft Fabric for analytical graphs or migrating Gremlin applications.
Pricing is by Request Units, which makes cost depend on query shape. Pick it only if Azure and Gremlin are already decided, because other languages are not supported.
What stands out
Managed only
Gremlin
Request Units
Where it costs you
Its documentation suggests other Microsoft products for high-scale and analytical graph work
Some features differ from Apache TinkerPop
It is available only as a managed Azure service
Right for
Azure shops already running Cosmos DB who need a Gremlin API
Wrong for
Anyone who needs Cypher, SPARQL or graph analytics
United StatesRequest Unit billing for throughput and storage, published; free tier of throughput and storage per account
A graph database stores records as nodes and the relationships between them as edges, so queries can follow connections across many hops without the table joins a relational database needs. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
10 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 2 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: Memgraph, FalkorDB, Neo4j, TypeDB, SurrealDB, TigerGraph, GraphDB, Stardog, Amazon Neptune, Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 5 countries across 3 regions (North America 6, Europe 5, Elsewhere 1). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
03
Consider whether you want the source
5 of these are open source: Memgraph, FalkorDB, Neo4j, TypeDB, NebulaGraph. Hosting one yourself trades a subscription for maintenance.
Query language is the real lock-in in a graph database
Storage formats are rarely the problem; queries are. Memgraph, FalkorDB and Neo4j all speak Cypher, and NebulaGraph, Amazon Neptune and TigerGraph support openCypher variants, so a Cypher codebase can move between them with edits. TypeDB's TypeQL, SurrealDB's SurrealQL and TigerGraph's GSQL do not move at all.
GraphDB and Stardog use SPARQL over RDF, a different data model rather than a different syntax, and Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin uses Gremlin. Before comparing price, write ten of your real queries in the language of each shortlisted product, and time how long the hard ones take you to express. If a vendor's best features need its own language, count the rewrite as part of exit cost.
Write ten real queries in each candidate's language before the demo.
Ask which features need the vendor's own language rather than Cypher.
Decide whether your data is property graph or RDF before choosing.
Each graph vendor meters something different
Memgraph licenses by memory capacity and says queries, compute and replicas are not charged. FalkorDB prices by gigabytes of storage, Neo4j AuraDB by gigabytes per hour, and TigerGraph Savanna by gigabytes per month, so a graph that doubles in size doubles the bill whatever you query.
Amazon Neptune bills instance hours, storage and I/O separately, while Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin bills Request Units, so an inefficient traversal costs money. Model your biggest realistic graph and your busiest hour, not the example from the pricing page, and ask what an extra replica adds. The cheapest rate per unit is irrelevant if your workload uses ten times the units of the vendor's example, which is how most graph bills are misjudged.
Estimate graph size at month twelve, not at launch.
Ask whether replicas, backups and I/O are billed separately.
Model your busiest hour if the meter is throughput.
Free editions in this market stop before production
Almost every vendor here offers a no-cost entry, and almost every one removes something you will need. FalkorDB's free tier has no TLS, clustering or backups. Stardog Free lacks high availability, caching, backups and LDAP integration. GraphDB Free runs one query at a time. Neo4j's AuraDB free tier limits node and relationship counts, and its pricing page positions the Community Edition for non-production projects.
TigerGraph's Community Edition is capped at 300 GB. These are fine for a pilot. They are a trap when the pilot becomes the production system and the missing pieces turn out to be paid, at a point where you have already built the application around them and a move is expensive.
List what the free edition omits: backups, failover, security.
Check the size or query-concurrency cap against your data.
Get the production price before the pilot starts.
Source available is not open source
Several graph databases have a public repository and a licence that is not a free software licence. Memgraph Community is under the Business Source License, SurrealDB's core is under BSL 1.1, and FalkorDB is under the Server Side Public License. NebulaGraph is under Apache 2.0, TypeDB under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, and Neo4j Community under GPL3.
The practical difference shows when you build a product on top, host it for others, or want a fork if the vendor changes course. Read the licence file in the repository, not the marketing line, and ask legal whether your use case, such as offering the database as part of a service, is permitted. Also check which features exist only in the commercial edition, since a permissive core can still leave the parts you need behind a quote.
Read the licence file in the repository itself.
Ask legal if you will resell or host the database for others.
Check whether the managed service is the only way to get features.
What goes wrong most often when buying graph databases software
Choosing a graph database before checking that the data is really a graph, when a relational database with a few recursive queries would do.
Pricing the pilot on a free tier and discovering at launch that TLS, backups or failover sit on a paid plan.
Picking a vendor-specific query language such as GSQL or TypeQL without costing the rewrite if you leave.
Putting a graph in a cloud-only service such as Amazon Neptune without planning how the data is exported later.
07
Frequently asked questions
8 answers
What is the best graph databases in 2026?
Memgraph leads our ranking of 12. Memgraph makes one product, and its price scales with memory capacity only, with no per-query, compute or replica charges. That is easy to forecast and hard to game.
The Community Edition is under the Business Source License, so it is source available rather than open source. Enterprise prices are not published, and an in-memory engine means the dataset has to fit the RAM you pay for.
Which graph databases tools publish their pricing?
10 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Memgraph: Free Community Edition; Enterprise priced by memory capacity, quoted; 30-day Enterprise trial on request.
FalkorDB: Free tier; paid cloud plans priced per GB of storage, published; Enterprise tailored.
Neo4j: Free AuraDB tier; Professional and Business Critical billed per GB per hour, published; Enterprise quoted.
TigerGraph: Free Community Edition up to 300 GB; Savanna cloud priced per GB per month, published; Enterprise quoted.
GraphDB: Free edition limited to single parallel queries; Enterprise licence quoted by sales.
Stardog: Free renewable one-year licence; Enterprise licensing quoted on a call.
Amazon Neptune: On-demand instance hours, storage and I/O, published; Serverless billed per capacity unit; 30-day free allowance.
Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin: Request Unit billing for throughput and storage, published; free tier of throughput and storage per account.
The other 2 quote per organisation.
Is there a free graph databases tool?
Memgraph, FalkorDB, Neo4j, TypeDB, SurrealDB, TigerGraph, GraphDB, Stardog, Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these graph databases vendors established?
In 5 countries across 3 regions: North America 6, Europe 5, Elsewhere 1.
Memgraph: United Kingdom.
FalkorDB: United States.
Neo4j: United States.
TypeDB: United Kingdom.
NebulaGraph: Not stated by the vendor.
SurrealDB: United Kingdom.
TigerGraph: United States.
Arango (ArangoDB): Germany.
GraphDB: Bulgaria.
Stardog: United States.
Amazon Neptune: United States.
Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin: United States.
Which graph databases tools are open source?
Memgraph, FalkorDB, Neo4j, TypeDB, NebulaGraph.
Which graph databases tools can you host yourself?
TypeDB, SurrealDB, GraphDB, Stardog. The other 8 are hosted by the vendor only.
What should you use instead of Memgraph?
FalkorDB and Neo4j are the next two on this page. FalkorDB is for small teams building GraphRAG prototypes who want a published per-GB price; Neo4j is for teams that need the largest pool of Cypher skills and a managed cloud.
Who should not buy Memgraph?
Graphs far larger than the memory you can afford. Enterprise prices are not published; you must talk to sales.
If your graph databases product belongs among these 12, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
