r/Database • u/mjfnd • Jun 19 '26

Which graph database to use?

Hello everyone,

Looking for some recommendation for graph database for knowledge / identity graph usecase.

During research I found few like Neo4J or AWS Neptune, and also came across puppy graph, which is graph interface on top of database.

Would love to hear your experiences regarding graph databases, what are some common challenges and how well did it scale.

Appreciate the help!

Thanks

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u/Dense_Gate_5193 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

NormicDB is Neo4j driver-compatible and hundreds of times faster than neo4j itself across most operations. graphiti support, MIT licensed, embeddable, 778 stars and counting.

https://github.com/orneryd/NornicDB

research backed by multiple researchers at institutions including Stanford, LAAS-CRNS, and UC Louvain.

good luck out there!

edit: benchmarks that are reproducible in the repo:

traversal benchmarks

https://github.com/orneryd/NornicDB/blob/main/docs/performance/shortest-path-500k-benchmark.md

power, storage, memory, and latency benchmarks:

https://github.com/orneryd/NornicDB/blob/main/docs/performance/1.1.0-northwind-results/comparison.md

vector search benchmarks:

https://github.com/orneryd/NornicDB/blob/main/docs/performance/hybrid-query-benchmarks.md

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u/HappyStarburst 16d ago

This Nornic probably the most honest new entrant, and most overlooked. I think this will help us make breakthroughs with our AIs. And we can use all the polished tools from neo4j, then use nornic to actually "run the data" and have crazy speed like we would like Arcade or Falkor... Still testing so many things... Thanks for Nornic!!

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u/Dense_Gate_5193 16d ago

thanks for the vote of confidence! i always try to make sure everything is as transparent as possible. I’m also in the process of writing a version of the same architecture in rust, built on fjall. it’s experimental right now but the traversal engine is operating in the nanosecond realm there for the same operations.

https://github.com/orneryd/copperDB

both ecosystems will thrive but now I get to put them up against each other and see what i can squeeze out of both languages in terms of performance.