GraphDB vs RDFox
GraphDB
graphdb.ontotext.com
RDFox
oxfordsemantic.techSide by side
| Figure | GraphDB | RDFox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 4 |
| Spec score · RDF Databases | 8.1 (#9) | 8.5 (#3) |
| Deployment | GraphDB can run as a desktop or standalone server application and is also available on AWS and Azure. | RDFox can run on a single machine or as a cluster distributing processing across multiple machines. |
| Headquarters | The company privacy policy lists ONTOTEXT AD, doing business as Graphwise, with headquarters in Sofia, Bulgaria. | Oxford, United Kingdom |
| Product | GraphDB is an RDF and SPARQL semantic graph database used for storage and inferencing in the Graphwise AI Platform. | RDFox is a main-memory, scalable centralized data store for RDF graph data queried with SPARQL 1.1. |
| Reasoning | GraphDB performs real-time forward-chaining reasoning across datasets. | It supports rules and ontological axioms represented with Datalog, OWL 2 and SWRL. |
| Security | GraphDB documents role and access controls, local, LDAP and OAuth user databases, Basic, GDB, OpenID and Kerberos authentication, SSL/TLS encryption in transit, and security auditing. | RDFox v7.0 added encryption at rest and client-certificate authentication using mutual TLS for endpoint and remote-shell requests. |
| Support | The edition comparison lists community support for Free and SLA support for Enterprise. | Oxford Semantic Technologies says it aims to reply to contact messages within two working days and provides an RDFox Community Slack channel. |
Plans
RDFox
- Free evaluationFree
- RDFox free evaluation licenseFree
- AWS Marketplace RDFoxPriced on request
- RDFox commercial licensePriced on request
In their own words
GraphDB
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.
RDFox
RDFox is a main-memory data store for centralized RDF graphs, queried with SPARQL 1.1. It represents rules and ontological axioms with Datalog, OWL 2 and SWRL, and updates rule consequences as data changes; it can process 2–3 million new-fact inferences per second. Its supported knowledge-graph technologies include RDF, SPARQL 1.1, Datalog, SWRL, OWL 2 RL and SHACL. Java applications can connect through a native API, or RDFox can run as a standalone server through a REST API. Import and export formats include CSV, JSON, N-Triples, Turtle, TriG and OWL 2 Functional-Style Syntax. It can replicate knowledge and data changes across servers to maintain service during an outage, and deployments are described for cloud, on-premises, on-device and edge use. RDFox runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. Security features include encryption at rest, mutual-TLS client-certificate authentication and OpenID Connect single sign-on. Pricing is on request; the free 30-day evaluation license is restricted to evaluation and non-commercial use.