Graph databases & knowledge graphs · vesoft inc.

NebulaGraph

Open-source distributed property-graph database using nGQL, built for billion-edge-scale graphs at low latency.

Visit NebulaGraph Alternatives

NebulaGraph is a distributed, open-source property-graph database designed for very large graphs — vendor material emphasizes billion-vertex, trillion-edge scale — used for social networks, recommendation engines and risk control. It is queried with nGQL, a SQL-like graph query language distinct from Cypher or Gremlin, though broadly similar in structure. The Open-Source Edition is free (Apache-2.0 core, with a Commons Clause restriction added to limit resale by cloud providers); NebulaGraph Enterprise adds features for production operation such as enhanced security and support, and NebulaGraph Cloud offers a pay-as-you-go managed service with a free trial. Storage is separated from compute in its architecture, allowing the two to scale independently, and it supports both OLTP-style point lookups and OLAP-style analytical traversals over the same data.

At a glance

Vendor vesoft inc.
Pricing model Free tier + paid plans
Free tier Yes
Deployment Cloud, Self-hosted
Open source Yes (Apache-2.0)
Best for Teams operating very large, high-throughput graphs (social, recommendation, risk) who want an open-source, horizontally scaled store.

Pricing

Open-Source Edition is free; Enterprise and NebulaGraph Cloud pricing require contacting sales, with a 14-day cloud trial.

Plan Price Notes
Open-source Edition Free self-hosted, Apache-2.0 with Commons Clause restriction
NebulaGraph Cloud custom / pay-as-you-go 14-day free trial, no credit card required

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Features

  • nGQL graph query language
  • Storage-compute separation for independent scaling
  • Distributed architecture for billion-edge graphs
  • Combined OLTP and OLAP-style graph queries
  • Built-in graph algorithms library
  • Kubernetes-native deployment (NebulaGraph Operator)

Integrations

Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026

Alternatives

JanusGraph Open-source distributed property-graph database queried with Gremlin, with pluggable storage and indexing backends. Dgraph Open-source, natively distributed property-graph database with a GraphQL-derived query language, now stewarded by Hypermode. TigerGraph Massively parallel native graph database with its own GSQL language, built for deep multi-hop analytics at scale. ArangoDB Multi-model database combining graph, document and key/value storage under one engine and one query language, AQL.

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Terms to know

Data modeling The practice of organizing data into entities, relationships and schemas that make it accurate and efficient to query. Machine learning Building models that learn patterns from data to make predictions or decisions, rather than following hand-coded rules.

Related guides

How to choose a graph database Decide property graph vs RDF first, then managed vs self-hosted and how the engine scales — the query language follows from those, not the other way round.