# Neo4j vs TigerData

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/neo4j-vs-tigerdata/

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Neo4j | TigerData |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $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. | Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month. |
| Pricing model | Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%. | Compute and storage are billed separately and hourly rather than as one plan price — compute from $30 a month, storage at $0.177 per GB-month, with the headline storage figure resting on an assumed 5x compression ratio. |
| Engine | Neo4j, a native property graph database. | PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, aimed at time-series, real-time analytics and events. A self-managed edition exists for on-prem and private cloud. |
| Point-in-time recovery | Not included on the entry-paid (Professional) tier — point-in-time restore is a Business Critical feature, with hourly granularity and 30-day retention. | 3 days on Performance, with cross-region backups available for disaster recovery on higher tiers. |
| Read replicas | Supported | Supported |

## Where they differ

### 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. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))
- TigerData: Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### Pricing model

- Neo4j: Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))
- TigerData: Compute and storage are billed separately and hourly rather than as one plan price — compute from $30 a month, storage at $0.177 per GB-month, with the headline storage figure resting on an assumed 5x compression ratio. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### Engine

- Neo4j: Neo4j, a native property graph database. ([source](https://neo4j.com/docs/aura/auradb/platform/backup-restore/))
- TigerData: PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, aimed at time-series, real-time analytics and events. A self-managed edition exists for on-prem and private cloud. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### Point-in-time recovery

- 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/))
- TigerData: 3 days on Performance, with cross-region backups available for disaster recovery on higher tiers. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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.

Pick TigerData if Time-series and analytics workloads that want to stay in Postgres — TimescaleDB's compression is the reason the storage line is affordable at volume.

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.

Consider something else: TigerData — The advertised storage price assumes 5x compression, so a workload that does not compress that well pays materially more than the figure suggests.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Neo4j: Yes
- 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.
- Regions: Neo4j: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces.
- Backup retention: 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.
- Storage price: TigerData: $0.177 per GB-month on Performance and $0.212 on Scale. TigerData notes the effective price assumes 5x compression, which is an average rather than a guarantee.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Neo4j or TigerData?**

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.
TigerData: Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month.

**Should I choose Neo4j or TigerData?**

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.
Pick TigerData if Time-series and analytics workloads that want to stay in Postgres — TimescaleDB's compression is the reason the storage line is affordable at volume.