# Amazon RDS vs Neo4j

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-neo4j/

Every value below is read from Amazon RDS's and Neo4j's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon RDS | Neo4j |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Engine | PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2. Each engine is a separate RDS product with its own version list and its own feature support, so a capability documented for one is not a capability of RDS as a whole. | Neo4j, a native property graph database. |
| Point-in-time recovery | Any point inside the configured backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Transaction logs are uploaded to S3 every five minutes, which is what bounds how close to now the latest restorable time can be. | 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 — 15 per primary, raisable on request | Supported |
| Backup retention | Between 0 and 35 days, set per DB instance; 0 disables automated backups entirely. The default depends on how the instance was created — one day via the API or CLI, seven days via the console — so there is no single default to quote. Multi-AZ DB clusters cannot be set below 1 day. | 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

### Engine

- Amazon RDS: PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2. Each engine is a separate RDS product with its own version list and its own feature support, so a capability documented for one is not a capability of RDS as a whole. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html))
- Neo4j: Neo4j, a native property graph database. ([source](https://neo4j.com/docs/aura/auradb/platform/backup-restore/))

### Point-in-time recovery

- Amazon RDS: Any point inside the configured backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Transaction logs are uploaded to S3 every five minutes, which is what bounds how close to now the latest restorable time can be. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_PIT.html))
- 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. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

### Backup retention

- Amazon RDS: Between 0 and 35 days, set per DB instance; 0 disables automated backups entirely. The default depends on how the instance was created — one day via the API or CLI, seven days via the console — so there is no single default to quote. Multi-AZ DB clusters cannot be set below 1 day. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_WorkingWithAutomatedBackups.BackupRetention.html))
- 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. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Amazon RDS if Teams already inside AWS, where the database sitting in the same VPC as everything else is worth more than any single feature on this page. Six engines, up to 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and read replicas you create and delete yourself.

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.

Consider something else: Amazon RDS — You want a database per pull request. RDS documents no branching, and replicas are manual — AWS states outright that it does not autoscale them.

Consider something else: 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.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Neo4j: Yes
- Entry paid plan: 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.
- Pricing model: Neo4j: Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%.
- Startup credit program: 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.
- Managed connection pooling: Amazon RDS: Supported
- Regions: Neo4j: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces.
- Connection limit: Amazon RDS: Not a fixed number: RDS for PostgreSQL sets max_connections by formula from the instance's memory — LEAST({DBInstanceClassMemory/9531392}, 5000) — so a bigger instance class gets more connections and the ceiling is 5,000 however large it is. The parameter can be set by hand anywhere from 6 to 262,143, which is a limit on what you may configure rather than what an instance will serve. Other engines use different divisors: MySQL is memory/12582880 with no cap.
- SOC 2: Amazon RDS: Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
- ISO 27001: Amazon RDS: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
- HIPAA: Amazon RDS: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
- GDPR / data residency: Amazon RDS: AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
- PCI DSS: Amazon RDS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Amazon RDS or Neo4j?**

Pick Amazon RDS if Teams already inside AWS, where the database sitting in the same VPC as everything else is worth more than any single feature on this page. Six engines, up to 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and read replicas you create and delete yourself.
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.