After introducing the first fully managed version of its graph database just over nine months ago, Neo4j Inc. today is doubling down with a free tier that it says any developer can use forever without paying a license fee.

Neo4j AuraDB Free is a tier of the fully managed service that includes one free fully functional graph database along with developer tools such as Neo4j Bloom (pictured) for visualizing relationships between elements. The tier includes built-in learning guides and one-click deployment along with cloud-native features like automatic upgrades and patching. Users don’t need to provide a credit card number and can start using the service immediately.

Neo4j Aura Enterprise was introduced in January following the 2019 rollout of a comparable managed service aimed at developers. The database is provided in a single-tenant instance for security purposes and includes such enterprise features as end-to-end encryption, built-in virtual private cloud isolation and role-based and node-level access controls.

The cloud services are grounded in the open-source version that has been available since 2007, but they have been substantially re-engineered with cloud-native features. Cloud versions of the open-source project are available from managed service providers, but they need to be manually maintained, patched and upgraded, said Ramanan Balakrishnan, the company’s senior director of product marketing for cloud.

Executives at Neo4j, which is the most widely used graph database, stressed that there’s a clear distinction between a free trial and a free tier. “A free trial generates leads, and what value is generated is transient,” Balakrishnan said. “This approach generates users, who in turn become advocates, promoters, evangelists, educators and partners.”

The free tier is limited to one database and a maximum graph size of 50,000 nodes and 175,000 relationships. That is suitable for small projects, experiments and proofs-of-concept, Balakrishnan said, and “when customers are ready to deploy in production they can expand to larger databases with advanced configurations, disaster recovery, security and support needs.”

Neo4j earlier this year raised $325 million in a Series F venture capital round, bringing its total funding to $516 million and helping solidify the mainstream status of the proliferating crop of graph databases. Those engines are unique in their ability to represent relationships between data elements that are impractical or impossible to define in relational data stores.

Balakrishnan said the company isn’t worried about cannibalizing the low-end of its market with a free tier. “If customers choose to pause or switch off a paid instance and experiment, they’re welcome to do so with AuraDB Free,” he said. Rather, the firm expects the availability of a free option to “dramatically increase developer adoption, making graph databases an essential part of all modern intelligent applications and analytics workloads.”

Photo: Neo4j