head to head · open source
neo4j vs cayley
neo4j has 17,386 GitHub stars, 2,835 forks, 252 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. cayley has 15,067 stars, 1,234 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. neo4j leads on adoption by 15% (17,386 vs 15,067 stars). neo4j is written in Java under GPL-3.0; cayley is written in Go under Apache-2.0. neo4j has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, cayley 8%. neo4j was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (graph, graph-database), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| neo4j | cayley | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 15K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-23 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick neo4j if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cayley if
- You want the cayley feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cayley fits your workflow better
About neo4j
= Neo4j: Graphs for Everyone = is the world's leading Graph Database. It is a high performance graph store with all the features expected of a mature and robust database, like a friendly query language and ACID transactions. The programmer works with a flexible network structure of nodes and relationships rather than static tables yet enjoys all the benefits of enterprise quality database. For many applications, Neo4j offers orders of magnitude performance benefits compared to relational DBs. Learn more on the website]. users]] == Using Neo4j == Neo4j is available as a fully managed solution where you can get…
read the full neo4j overview →
About cayley
Cayley is an open source database for Linked Data. It is inspired by the graph database behind Google's Knowledge Graph (formerly Freebase)). Documentation Features Built in query editor, visualizer and REPL Multiple query languages: Gizmo: query language inspired by Gremlin GraphQL inspired query language MQL: simplified version for Freebase) fans Modular: easy to connect to your favorite programming languages and back end stores Production ready: well tested and used by various companies for their production workloads Fast: optimized specifically for usage in applications Performance Rough performance testing…
read the full cayley overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is neo4j or cayley more popular?
neo4j has 17,386 GitHub stars and cayley has 15,067. neo4j has the larger community by that measure.
Are neo4j and cayley free?
Both are open source. neo4j is licensed under GPL-3.0 and cayley under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between neo4j and cayley?
neo4j is written in Java and cayley in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, neo4j or cayley?
Choose neo4j if you want the larger community (17,386 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cayley if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.