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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 (10th)
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) (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 5.9%, up 5.3% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.4% mindshare, down 16.2% since last year.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Neo4j Graph Database5.9%
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced13.1%
Redis8.3%
Other72.7%
NoSQL Databases
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.4%
Oracle Database10.4%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.6%
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

"Enables people to understand what the business problem is and how the technology helps."
"Creates the ability to visualize outputs."
"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."
"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."
"For now, the tool doesn't break down or stop, so it is quite stable."
"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."
"The solution has proven to be very stable."
"It's a good learning environment, it's easy enough to learn and understand. Anybody that picks up the language early on will be able to develop in it."
"The solution has a reliable database."
"Implementing a unified, reliable database is one of the main improvements of departments whose business is to make decisions according their aggregated data."
"The latest version supports for big data analytics. SQL Server's vector processing-based batch execution mode is now available to the entire execution of R or Python code. Since much of the work that tends to be done in R and Python involves aggregation, batch mode - which processes rows of data several at a time, can be very helpful."
"It's a good option for those that have a lot of Microsoft solutions in use."
"SQL Server is very powerful and useful when you need to store, retrieve, process, and analyze a large amount of data."
"SQL is stable."
 

Cons

"For me, when the tool was deployed on an on-premises model, it was a little bit difficult the first time."
"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."
"There are concerns about performance and whether the tool can necessarily scale to provide the solution."
"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."
"So far, we have not had any issues and are happy with the product in general."
"The pricing and quality of the product could be improved."
"The stored procedure integration with our development could be better. Things are always changing very fast at Microsoft, and it takes a lot of resources to get on top of it. We're struggling with version control. In terms of new features, we don't have any feature requests. We are not focusing on the database."
"There was a time when Microsoft support provided very crisp answers, but over time, they have diluted their support to third parties, leading to a drop in support quality, which restricts me from giving a perfect 10, as post-sales service is crucial."
"Problems include - is it an MS product? Then licensing can be a pain if they do an audit."
"Occasionally the performance, as good as it is, is a bit off."
"SQL Server is an expensive solution"
"Right now we don't get much technical support from Microsoft"
"Security is an area that can be improved. It could be more secure; more security is needed."
 

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."
"The solution is on a pay-per-use pricing model."
"The cost associated with SQL Servers is on the higher side."
"Their options for concurrency and locking are good, as well as their prices."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
"Pricing for this product is very reasonable."
"Currently, almost all of my machines are in Azure and I think it is the best way of licensing now (VM+software)."
"The price of the solution is fine."
"Although it comes with a cost, using the most recent version is highly advisable, since it would ensure a certain measure of bug fixes and stability. The sole issue would involve the cost, as this is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

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 Microsoft, MongoDB, Redis and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.