head to head · open source
Milvus vs neo4j
Milvus has 46,563 GitHub stars, 4,325 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped yesterday. neo4j has 17,386 stars, 2,835 forks, 252 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Milvus leads on adoption by 168% (46,563 vs 17,386 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; neo4j is written in Java under GPL-3.0. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, neo4j 16%. Milvus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Milvus | neo4j | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 2.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Milvus if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick neo4j if
- You want the neo4j feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and neo4j fits your workflow better
About Milvus
What is Milvus? 🐦 Milvus is a high performance vector database built for scale. It powers AI applications by efficiently organizing and searching vast amounts of unstructured data, such as text, images, and multi modal information. 🧑💻 Written in Go and C++, Milvus implements hardware acceleration for CPU/GPU to achieve best in class vector search performance. Thanks to its fully distributed and K8s native architecture, Milvus can scale horizontally, handle tens of thousands of search queries on billions of vectors, and keep data fresh with real time streaming updates. Milvus also supports Standalone mode for…
read the full Milvus overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or neo4j more popular?
Milvus has 46,563 GitHub stars and neo4j has 17,386. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and neo4j free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and neo4j under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and neo4j?
Milvus is written in Go and neo4j in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Milvus or neo4j?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,563 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose neo4j if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.