How Much Money Will You Spend on Hosting a Database

Modern applications require databases with either basic datastore or strong analytical capabilities, and choosing the right one can be complicated due to various factors, including costs associated with licensing, training, features, support, and hosting. Hosting costs, which are often overlooked, can vary significantly depending on the database system, and this blog post focuses on comparing the hosting costs of Memgraph and Neo4j, two graph databases that use the Bolt protocol and Cypher for queries. Memgraph, a native C++ database, stores all data in RAM and supports persistency through periodic snapshots, making it better suited for real-time computations but limited by available RAM. In contrast, Neo4j, based on JVM, stores data on the disk and uses RAM as a cache, which can lead to higher memory usage due to JVM's overhead. Benchmark tests on small, medium, and large datasets reveal that Memgraph generally consumes less memory and executes queries faster than Neo4j, resulting in potential cost savings when correlated with AWS instance pricing. The analysis highlights the importance of considering memory usage and hosting costs in database selection, suggesting Memgraph as a cost-effective and high-performing option for certain applications.