Eclipse RDF4J vs GraphDB

Eclipse RDF4J is a modular Java framework for parsing, storing, querying, and reasoning over RDF data. It supports SPARQL 1.1 query and update, and its API can access remote RDF repositories in the same way as local ones. Supported formats include RDF/XML, Turtle, N-Triples, N-Quads, JSON-LD, TriG, and TriX. Storage options include a transactional in-memory store with optional disk persistence and a transactional Native Store aimed at medium-sized datasets around 100 million triples. Extensions add full-text search, RDFS inferencing, rule-based reasoning, SHACL and SPIN validation, and geospatial queries. The SDK bundles libraries, Server, Workbench, Console, and Javadoc API; Workbench includes a web interface with a SPARQL editor. Developers can use Maven artifacts or download an SDK zip or onejar. RDF4J is free under the Eclipse Distribution License, version 1.0. The latest stable release, 6.1.0, requires Java 25 or newer. The project describes its core databases as mainly intended for small to medium-sized datasets and notes third-party stores may scale further or offer additional features.

GraphDB is an RDF and SPARQL semantic graph database for storing data and performing inferencing in the Graphwise AI Platform. It supports SPARQL 1.1, RDF4J compatibility, RDFS and OWL 2 RL and QL rulesets, federated queries, and RDF-star. Its real-time forward-chaining reasoning operates across datasets, and the product page describes native GraphRAG and LangChain integration. GraphDB can run as a desktop or standalone server application, be self-hosted, or be deployed on AWS and Azure; downloads are listed for Windows, macOS, Linux, and a platform-independent distribution. The Free edition includes a Lucene connector, one parallel query, and up to five repositories; GraphDB 11 and later requires a free license. Enterprise supports multiple cores, unlimited repositories, high-availability clustering, and connectors for Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, and Kafka. Free is on-premise only with community support. Enterprise includes SLA support and is licensed per server CPU core, with each cluster node licensed separately. Free costs nothing; Enterprise pricing is on request.