Aiven vs Neo4j
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Aiven and Neo4j built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Aiven if…
Teams who want more than one open-source data service from one vendor and one bill — Postgres beside Kafka, ClickHouse or OpenSearch — with the availability tier chosen per service rather than fixed.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Neo4j if…
Teams whose data is naturally relationships-first — recommendation engines, fraud detection, knowledge graphs — where the query itself is a graph traversal Cypher expresses directly and a relational join chain would not.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Aiven: You want long recovery history on a cheap plan. Backup history is what the plan tiers buy here: two days on the entry paid plan against thirty at the top.
- Neo4j: The data model is tabular and the graph shape is incidental — most CRUD apps fit a relational or document database better, and Neo4j's per-GB memory pricing is a worse fit for large flat datasets than a row-store.
7 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Aiven 0
Neo4j 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Aiven | Neo4j |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes — indefinite, but idle services are powered off | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12. | $65/GB/month (minimum 1GB cluster) on AuraDB Professional, or $0.09/hour ($65.70/month for 1GB) metered hourly. 14-day free trial available. |
| Pricing model | Fixed plans quoted both monthly and hourly, with the plan setting CPU, RAM and storage together rather than metering them separately. Aiven describes the pricing as all-inclusive: backups, monitoring and support come with the plan instead of appearing as line items. Higher tiers buy node count and backup history — Business adds a standby node, Premium a second. | Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%. |
| Startup credit program | Aiven for Startups: $12,000–$100,000 in Aiven credits over 12 months. Requires founded ≤7 years ago and external funding from pre-seed to Series B. | Neo4j for Startups: up to $16K in Aura credits. Requires Series B or earlier funding, a single product sold to many customers (not custom per-customer work), a functioning website, and a company LinkedIn profile. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | 153 regions across six clouds — AWS 25, Google 42, Azure 39, OVH 22, UpCloud 16, DigitalOcean 9 — counted from Aiven's own reference list, which publishes the regions and no total. No magnitude is recorded, because Aiven states on that same page that the list differs per project and that not all service types are available in every cloud and region: the number is the platform's reach, not PostgreSQL's, and a bar drawn from it would be compared against providers whose counts are engine-specific. | AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces. |
| Data | ||
| Engine | PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka, Flink and Grafana. Aiven runs the upstream projects rather than a compatible reimplementation, which is why its own docs point at postgresql.org for per-release detail. | Neo4j, a native property graph database. |
| Point-in-time recovery | Bounded by the plan's backup history, so 2 days on the entry paid plan and 30 at the top. Granularity is fine within that: full backups daily with write-ahead logs copied every 5 minutes or per new file, whichever comes first. | Not included on the entry-paid (Professional) tier — point-in-time restore is a Business Critical feature, with hourly granularity and 30-day retention. |
| Read replicas | Supported | Supported |
| Backup retention | By plan: none on Hobbyist, 2 days on Startup, 14 on Business, 30 on Premium. The magnitude is Startup's 2 days, the entry paid plan. Aiven's high-availability page states 2 days for Hobbyist where the backups page states none — the backups page is the more specific of the two and is what is recorded here. | Daily backups, 7-day retention on the entry-paid (Professional) tier. Business Critical adds 30-day retention with hourly point-in-time restore; Virtual Dedicated Cloud gets hourly backups with 60-day retention. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Aiven
- $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12.
- Neo4j
- $65/GB/month (minimum 1GB cluster) on AuraDB Professional, or $0.09/hour ($65.70/month for 1GB) metered hourly. 14-day free trial available.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans & Pricing — Aiven ↗
“Free $0 / month [...] 1 GB total storage Cannot select a specific cloud or region No integrations or connection pooling Developer $5 / month [...] 8 GB total storage Cannot select a specific cloud or region No integrations or connection pooling Hobbyist starting from $12 / month $0.02 / hour [...] Startup starting from $75 / month $0.10 / hour [...] 99.99% uptime SLA Business starting from $180 / month $0.25 / hour”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“$65/GB/month, minimum 1GB cluster. 14-day free trial available. 1GB costs $0.09/hour or $65.70/month.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Aiven
- Fixed plans quoted both monthly and hourly, with the plan setting CPU, RAM and storage together rather than metering them separately. Aiven describes the pricing as all-inclusive: backups, monitoring and support come with the plan instead of appearing as line items. Higher tiers buy node count and backup history — Business adds a standby node, Premium a second.
- Neo4j
- Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans & Pricing — Aiven ↗
“Aiven's pricing is all-inclusive and transparent, providing you with the confidence [...] Startup starting from $75 / month $0.10 / hour [...] Business starting from $180 / month $0.25 / hour [...] Everything in Startup, plus high availability Premium starting from $270 / month $0.37 / hour”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Pause database, save 80% costs.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Startup credit program
- Aiven
- Aiven for Startups: $12,000–$100,000 in Aiven credits over 12 months. Requires founded ≤7 years ago and external funding from pre-seed to Series B.
- Neo4j
- Neo4j for Startups: up to $16K in Aura credits. Requires Series B or earlier funding, a single product sold to many customers (not custom per-customer work), a functioning website, and a company LinkedIn profile.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for Startups ↗
“Your startup should have been founded no more than 7 years ago. Your company should have raised external funding anything from pre-seed to Series B. From $12,000 up to $100,000 in Aiven credits to power your data infrastructure over the course of 12 months.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official site
- Neo4j for Startups ↗
“up to $16K in Aura credits. Series B or earlier. Startups building a single product for many customers, not a custom product for individual customers.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official site
Regions
- Aiven
- 153 regions across six clouds — AWS 25, Google 42, Azure 39, OVH 22, UpCloud 16, DigitalOcean 9 — counted from Aiven's own reference list, which publishes the regions and no total. No magnitude is recorded, because Aiven states on that same page that the list differs per project and that not all service types are available in every cloud and region: the number is the platform's reach, not PostgreSQL's, and a bar drawn from it would be compared against providers whose counts are engine-specific.
- Neo4j
- AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Available cloud regions — Aiven docs ↗
“This is a reference list of the default cloud regions available per provider on the Aiven Platform. note The list of available clouds can differ per project. Not all Aiven service types are available for all cloud providers and regions.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Available on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. You can deploy AuraDB in over 60 global cloud regions.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Engine
- Aiven
- PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka, Flink and Grafana. Aiven runs the upstream projects rather than a compatible reimplementation, which is why its own docs point at postgresql.org for per-release detail.
- Neo4j
- Neo4j, a native property graph database.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Aiven for PostgreSQL is the perfect fit for your relational data. A scalable SQL database solution that can be up and running within a few minutes. [...] Find a comprehensive per-release documentation on the PostgreSQL project website.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Aura documentation ↗
“Neo4j Aura is a fully automated graph platform offered as a cloud service.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official docs
Point-in-time recovery
- Aiven
- Bounded by the plan's backup history, so 2 days on the entry paid plan and 30 at the top. Granularity is fine within that: full backups daily with write-ahead logs copied every 5 minutes or per new file, whichever comes first.
- Neo4j
- Not included on the entry-paid (Professional) tier — point-in-time restore is a Business Critical feature, with hourly granularity and 30-day retention.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® backups — Aiven docs ↗
“Aiven for PostgreSQL® databases are automatically backed up, with full backups made daily, and write-ahead logs (WAL) copied at 5 minute intervals, or for every new file generated. All backups are encrypted using pghoard, an open source tool developed and maintained by Aiven.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Business Critical: Daily backups with 30-day retention and hourly point-in-time restore.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Backup retention
- Aiven
- By plan: none on Hobbyist, 2 days on Startup, 14 on Business, 30 on Premium. The magnitude is Startup's 2 days, the entry paid plan. Aiven's high-availability page states 2 days for Hobbyist where the backups page states none — the backups page is the more specific of the two and is what is recorded here.
- Neo4j
- Daily backups, 7-day retention on the entry-paid (Professional) tier. Business Critical adds 30-day retention with hourly point-in-time restore; Virtual Dedicated Cloud gets hourly backups with 60-day retention.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® backups — Aiven docs ↗
“Backup retention time by plan The number of stored backups and the backup retention time depends on the service plan that you have selected. Plan Type Backup Retention Time Hobbyist None Startup 2 days Business 14 days Premium 30 days”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Professional: Daily backups, 7-day retention. Business Critical: Daily backups with 30-day retention and hourly point-in-time restore. Virtual Dedicated Cloud: Hourly backups with 60-day retention.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Aiven or Neo4j?
Aiven: $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12.
Neo4j: $65/GB/month (minimum 1GB cluster) on AuraDB Professional, or $0.09/hour ($65.70/month for 1GB) metered hourly. 14-day free trial available.
Should I choose Aiven or Neo4j?
Pick Aiven if Teams who want more than one open-source data service from one vendor and one bill — Postgres beside Kafka, ClickHouse or OpenSearch — with the availability tier chosen per service rather than fixed.
Pick Neo4j if Teams whose data is naturally relationships-first — recommendation engines, fraud detection, knowledge graphs — where the query itself is a graph traversal Cypher expresses directly and a relational join chain would not.