What is Neo4j used for?

Neo4j is a graph database that stores data as connected nodes and relationships and is queried with the Cypher language, widely used for highly connected data. It is a good fit for recommendation engines, fraud and network analysis, and knowledge graphs.

Is Neo4j open source?

Yes. Neo4j is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at neo4j/neo4j and is written mainly in Java.

Yes. Neo4j is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Neo4j?

Yes. Neo4j can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Neo4j an alternative to?

Neo4j is an open-source alternative to Amazon Neptune, Neo4j AuraDB and TigerGraph. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon Neptune include Dgraph, FalkorDB and ArangoDB.

Is Neo4j actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Neo4j was on 22 September 2026, and the latest release is 3.2.0-alpha08, published on 11 April 2017. The project has 17k stars on GitHub.

Neo4j: open-source alternative to Amazon Neptune

About Neo4j

Neo4j is a graph database written in Java. Instead of tables, it stores data as nodes and relationships, which makes it a good fit for problems where the connections between records matter, such as social networks, fraud detection, recommendations and knowledge graphs. Data is queried with Cypher, the graph query language associated with the project.

The repository contains the open-source community edition of the database engine. Topics tag it as a NoSQL graph database and graphdb, and the project's tagline is simply that graphs are for everyone. The repository's homepage could not be fetched while preparing this entry, so details here are limited to the repository description and widely known facts about the product.

The community edition is licensed under GPL-3.0, while commercial editions with additional enterprise features and a managed cloud service are sold by Neo4j, Inc. You can run the database on your own servers or use the hosted service. It is aimed at developers and data teams modeling relationship-heavy data.

Key features

Native graph storage with nodes and relationships
Cypher query language
NoSQL graph database engine
Community edition source code
Suited to connected-data problems

Good fit for

→Recommendation engines
→Fraud and network analysis
→Knowledge graphs

Built with: Java
Tags: graph-database; cypher; nosql; database; java; knowledge-graph; graph; self-hosted

Neo4j: questions and answers

What is Neo4j used for?: Neo4j is a graph database that stores data as connected nodes and relationships and is queried with the Cypher language, widely used for highly connected data. It is a good fit for recommendation engines, fraud and network analysis, and knowledge graphs.
Is Neo4j open source?: Yes. Neo4j is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at neo4j/neo4j and is written mainly in Java.
Is Neo4j free?: Yes. Neo4j is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Neo4j?: Yes. Neo4j can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Neo4j an alternative to?: Neo4j is an open-source alternative to Amazon Neptune, Neo4j AuraDB and TigerGraph. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon Neptune include Dgraph, FalkorDB and ArangoDB.
Is Neo4j actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Neo4j was on 22 September 2026, and the latest release is 3.2.0-alpha08, published on 11 April 2017. The project has 17k stars on GitHub.