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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 (8th)
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 6.0%, up 4.9% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.7% mindshare, down 17.3% since last year.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Neo4j Graph Database6.0%
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced13.3%
Redis8.6%
Other72.1%
NoSQL Databases
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.7%
Oracle Database10.9%
IBM Db2 Database6.3%
Other72.1%
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 enables circumstances which would have been a complex problem to be simplified."
"Neo4j helps with advanced search needs, providing good search results and aggregates compared to MongoDB."
"Creates the ability to visualize outputs."
"It is good for search-based tasks, providing solid search results and aggregate results."
"As a graph database, I am surprised at their performance and response time."
"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."
"For now, the tool doesn't break down or stop, so it is quite stable."
"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."
"Reliability, transaction management, and its higher limits for storage and table management are the most valuable features for us."
"The most valuable feature of SQL Server is that it is easy to set up."
"Its speed and the ease of server management are valuable. If I compare Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL, what I like in Microsoft SQL Server is the speed. We are using Microsoft Management Studio for managing our Microsoft SQL Server, and the user interface that I get to work with is also better."
"Enables us to convert to bigger DBs and more easily move or upgrade between branches."
"The performance of SQL Server is perfect."
"Security is obviously the most valuable feature because I can provide certain logins for a particular level of security and I can provide specific permissions for certain logins."
"The installation is pretty straightforward."
"One of the big advantages of this product is its performance, where it works well when the data is not complex."
 

Cons

"The only problem is that the community is quite small."
"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."
"The only problem is that the community is quite small."
"There are concerns about performance and whether the tool can necessarily scale to provide the solution."
"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 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."
"It would definitely be better if SQL Server were free."
"Its security can be improved. When you look at the Windows environment, it isn't the most secure environment."
"Sometimes the cross-database performance isn't the best."
"There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to limited compatibility across the platform and restricted performance with massive data sets."
"We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server."
"Security is an issue. This is an area that needs to be improved."
"The upgrades are unstable."
"SQL Server could be improved in terms of cost; the licensing cost is very high, although the return on investment is good because of the features it provides."
 

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."
"The price could be better. Aside from the basic features, if you need any additional features that can be extended, for example, if you want to connect with the heterogeneous databases, they are being managed as separate services and not included in the package. If you manage a database in Azure, it's not providing SFS and reporting services. However, on-premises, if you purchase the SQL Server license, it includes SFIS and SFRS services. If you take Postgre SQL and MySQL, they provide almost all the same features even though they are both open source databases."
"The price of SQL Server could be reduced, the license is expensive. We have an annual subscription."
"For licensing, we pay yearly. The licensing is very expensive, and it should be cheaper."
"It is annual."
"For smaller companies, they find this solution expensive."
"This solution is available at a much lower price point than Oracle."
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
"The setup cost is high, but it will return every penny."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
University
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
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, Couchbase and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.