The technology world, in recent years, is experiencing rapid adoption of the cloud.

Businesses switching to the Cloud are also tapping into non-traditional databases, especially Data Lakes and Graph.

While the traditional databases are still required from an operational standpoint, the non-traditional databases help businesses uncover data insights in order to gain a competitive edge in the market.

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the 3 best graph analytics tools in 2021.

1. Amazon Neptune
2. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
3. Neo4j

Let’s now see a quick summary of each of these tools.

1. Amazon Neptune

Amazon Neptune is a cloud-based solution for Graph databases. As a Graph Database as a Service (DBaaS), Neptune also supports RDF stores (compatible with SPARQL), apart from Graph DBMS.

Amazon Neptune database is easy to use, performance-driven and ACID-compliant.

From the performance standpoint, Amazon Neptune is a purpose-built solution for graph applications that require maximized throughput at minimal latency. It can store billions of relationships and execute queries in milliseconds.

Though not an open-source solution, Amazon Neptune offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of database instances used. It is an attractive option for many companies looking to tap into graph technologies, as it doesn’t demand a long-term commitment.

2. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Formerly known as Azure DocumentDB, the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a fully-managed, ACID-compliant NoSQL Database that comes with a 99.99% availability, and guaranteed single-digit millisecond response times.

Apart from the Graph Database, it also supports other database models – Document store, key-value store, and wide column store models.

The Azure Cosmos DB is suitable for applications that handle a massive amount of read-and-write operations in real-time. The cosmos DB provides performance advantages apart from being easily scalable, developer-friendly, and distribution-friendly.

From the pricing standpoint, the Azure Cosmos DB is not an open-source platform. The billing is done based on database operations, consumed storage, and dedicated gateways (which is optional).

In terms of database operations, Azure Cosmos DB comes in the provisioned throughput and serverless models. The Provisioned Throughput model is suitable for critical workloads that require high throughput and low latency, while the serverless model is suitable for workload spikes on-demand.

3. Neo4j

Neo4j is a purpose-built, mature, ACID-compliant Graph DBaaS. It is available in both on-premise and cloud versions and uses its own graph query language, known as Cypher (abbreviated CQL).

With the neosemantics (n10s) plugin, Neo4j supports RDF also with limited functionalities.

For this blog post, we’ll mainly focus on the fully-managed cloud version – Neo4j AuraDB. It is a zero-admin, always-on graph database.

While the on-premise version is open-source, the cloud version comes at a cost. Neo4j Aura is priced with 3 plans currently – Free forever, Professional, and Enterprise.

The free forever plan is limited to 50k nodes and 175k relationships. It’s perfect for learning and prototyping purposes. 

The Professional and Enterprise tiers are priced based on the number of database instances deployed, and each of their RAM configurations. The compute, backup and other critical factors don’t affect the pricing, which makes up for simple and transparent pricing.