head to head · open source
neo4j vs cayley
neo4j has 17,241 GitHub stars, 2,703 forks, 252 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. cayley has 15,064 stars, 1,238 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. neo4j leads on adoption by 14% (17,241 vs 15,064 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 | 2026-09-10 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 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 is a Java graph database released under GPL 3.0 that stores data as nodes and relationships and queries it with Cypher, aimed at developers, data engineers, and platform teams building connected data applications who would otherwise model those relationships as tables and joins.
read the full neo4j overview →
About cayley
Cayley is an open source graph database written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It stores and queries Linked Data, the graph shaped data model standardized by the W3C for the Semantic Web, and its design takes direct inspiration from the graph database that sat behind Google's Knowledge Graph, formerly known as Freebase. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and has been maintained in public for roughly twelve years, accumulating about 15,000 stars and 1,238 forks, with 93 open issues at the time of writing. Its topics — cayley, go, graph, graph database, linked data — describe both the language …
read the full cayley overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is neo4j or cayley more popular?
neo4j has 17,241 GitHub stars and cayley has 15,064. 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 (17,241 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.