LadybugDB vs TerminusDB
LadybugDB
ladybugdb.comTerminusDB
terminusdb.orgSide by side
| Figure | LadybugDB | TerminusDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Graph Databases | 8.2 (#11) | 7.4 (#26) |
| Deployment | Ladybug runs embedded in an application process and does not require managing a separate database server. | The quickstart runs TerminusDB in Docker, and the documentation also describes building from source on Linux or macOS and running it on Kubernetes. |
| Integrations | The documentation describes integrations with Snowflake and PostgreSQL, and attaching to DuckDB, SQLite, Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Unity Catalog sources. | Its GraphQL interface works with Apollo, urql, Relay, and other GraphQL clients; official client libraries are available for TypeScript/JavaScript and Python, with Rust also documented. |
| Product | Ladybug is an embedded graph database optimized for complex analytical workloads on very large graphs. | TerminusDB is an open-source document graph database that stores JSON documents in a schema-enforced graph and includes Git-like version control. |
| Support | The site lists community support and says commercial enterprise support contracts are available. | The official site directs users to the TerminusDB community on Discord and to GitHub for other ways to connect. |
| Transactions | Ladybug supports serializable ACID transactions. | The documentation says commits are ACID transactions and schema validation is enforced on every write. |
Plans
In their own words
LadybugDB
LadybugDB is an embedded columnar graph database for analytical workloads and agentic applications. It uses Cypher with a structured property graph model and can run on disk or in memory; in-memory data is lost when the process ends. Its query engine uses columnar disk storage, vectorized and factorized processing, multi-core parallelism, and join algorithms. Transactions are atomic, durable, and serializable. The project distributes source code and precompiled binaries under the MIT License, which permits commercial and proprietary applications. Imports support Parquet, CSV, JSON, NumPy, Pandas or Polars DataFrames, and PyArrow Tables. Official client APIs are listed for Python, Node.js, Java, Rust, Go, Swift, C, and C++, alongside a command-line interface. Ladybug Explorer provides a browser-based way to query and visualize a database, and the MCP Server exposes a database to LLMs and agents. Extensions cover sources and systems including Azure storage, Delta Lake, DuckDB, Iceberg, PostgreSQL, and vector similarity search. Concurrent access permits one read-write Database object or multiple read-only objects; multiple processes needing writes should use an API server pattern.
TerminusDB
TerminusDB is a free, open-source document graph database for JSON documents stored in a schema-enforced graph. It adds Git-like version control for data, including branching, diffing, merging, cloning, synchronization, and time travel. Commits are ACID transactions, and every write receives schema validation. Developers can use the HTTP document API, GraphQL, or WOQL, a Datalog-based query language. GraphQL works with Apollo, urql, Relay, and other clients; official libraries cover TypeScript/JavaScript and Python, with Rust documented. Role-based access control uses users, roles, capabilities, and resource scopes. Deployment documentation covers Docker, Linux or macOS source builds, and Kubernetes. DFRNT provides cloud hosting instances, while community support is available through Discord and GitHub. TerminusDB supports ontology modeling, semantic reasoning, graph visualization, and imports from CSV, JSON, JSON-LD, RDF/XML, and Turtle. It does not support RDF/SPARQL.