Neo4j AuraDB Enhancements: Better Features & Speed

Neo4j Expands Cloud Database Capabilities to Power Enterprise-Scale Graph Deployments

We’re thrilled to announce a major transformation of our cloud graph database offering, Neo4j AuraDB, making it dramatically easier for enterprises to deploy graph solutions in production for any workload or use case. The new features and capabilities include:

Enterprise features at a lower cost: AuraDB Business Critical has high availability and advanced security for 20% less than AuraDB Enterprise, now renamed to AuraDB Virtual Dedicated Cloud
Streamlined data management and user experience with Aura Console, which administers, models, and visualizes data across Neo4j tools, along with a new GenAI copilot to enhance productivity via a unified data management hub
An interactive, low-code dashboard builder, NeoDash creates maps, bar charts, tables, and other visualizations
Expanded vertical scaling with up to 512GB AuraDB instances for large, complex datasets and applications
Ability to process up to 15x more data per cluster with read-only secondaries on AuraDB, enabling horizontal scaling without compromising latency or performance

We’re introducing these enhancements amid rising demand for Neo4j’s fully managed cloud offering. This demand is driven by graph databases’ critical role in developing GenAI apps that deliver highly accurate responses, rich context, deep explainability, advanced analytics applications, and the evolving data ecosystem. According to Gartner, graph technologies will be used in 80% of data and analytics innovations by 2025, up from 10% in 2021.¹ Neo4j AuraDB will now allow enterprises to meet growing business needs for scalability, performance, sophisticated data management, and advanced analytics applications well into the future—even as data volumes and complexity continue to increase. The new features and capabilities, detailed below, are available now.

Introducing AuraDB Business Critical: Enterprise Features at a Lower Cost

AuraDB Business Critical is our new service tier designed for mission-critical applications that require advanced security, scalability, and round-the-clock support. At over 20% less than Neo4j AuraDB Virtual Dedicated Cloud, it provides a cost-effective option for organizations seeking enterprise-grade features. Business Critical enables both pay-as-you-go and prepaid consumption models, providing ultimate commercial flexibility for organizations. With AuraDB Business Critical, you get:

Highly available database cluster with 99.95% uptime SLA
Built-in security with enhanced data protection and role-based access control
Vertical scaling up to 512GB RAM AuraDB instances
Daily backups with 30-day retention and hourly point-in-time restore
Pay-as-you-go and prepaid consumption billing
Regional 24 x 7 support

AuraDB Business Critical will soon be available in the same regions as AuraDB Professional over the next few quarters. For more information on AuraDB pricing and service level tiers, visit Neo4j pricing. Customers requiring dedicated infrastructure can continue to use AuraDB Enterprise, now renamed AuraDB Virtual Dedicated Cloud. AuraDB Professional tier is now available as a free trial, allowing you to explore and test features before deploying workloads in production. The trial gives you access to a full-featured product to build and test with before making a purchase decision.

Streamlined Data Management and User Experience With Aura Console, Query API, GraphQL API, and Change Data Capture (CDC)

Aura Console, featuring a GenAI copilot, is a unified platform for developers and administrators that integrates Neo4j Bloom, Neo4j Browser, Neo4j Importer, and Neo4j OpsManager. This single interface allows users to efficiently administer, manage, ingest, model, and visualize data across Neo4j’s offerings and tools, enhancing usability and creating a streamlined user experience. With natural language interaction, the copilot assists in writing and improving Cypher queries and offers support for visually exploring graph data. By simplifying and streamlining data management for developers and database administrators, Aura Console offers:

Improved workflows with a single hub for all data management tasks
Consistent user experience through a single UX across Neo4j tools
Easier collaboration as teams can share resources and collaborate on projects
Secure data access with expanded roles and new access controls
Improve productivity and learning with a GenAI copilot by helping developers write and improve Cypher queries

To further improve accessibility and integration options, we’ve introduced two powerful API features: Query API: Execute Cypher statements against your Neo4j server through simple HTTP requests. This new feature enables seamless communication between Neo4j and your other systems, making it easier to incorporate graph database capabilities into your existing workflows. Additionally, it enhances the integration of Neo4j with modern front-end technologies and frameworks, making it easier to build and iterate on applications, ultimately broadening the scope of what can be developed on the platform. Learn more about the Query API here. GraphQL API: You can now enable GraphQL for AuraDB instances, connecting via this widely adopted and developer-friendly query language. With GraphQL, you can request exactly the data you need in a single API call, simplifying your data interactions. This enhancement also improves Neo4j’s integration with modern front-end technologies and frameworks, making it easier for you to build and iterate on applications. Ultimately, you’ll have a broader scope of what you can develop on the platform, unlocking new possibilities for your projects. Learn more about the GraphQL API here.

Aura Console: Various actions users can take along with querying the graph

To further streamline data management and user experience, we’ve also implemented the following capability: Change Data Capture (CDC): Automates tracking and notification of database changes so organizations can make mission-critical decisions in real time. It also empowers application developers to create event-driven applications using Neo4j as the system of record, with the ability to filter for specific events. Our customers have built applications that include:

Security systems that map access and entitlement
Application governance and change management
Building entity-resolution pipelines
Active recommendation systems

We now offer Neo4j Connectors for Confluent and Apache Kafka v5.1, which include support for CDC strategies. Learn more about CDC and the latest connectors here.

Introducing NeoDash: Interactive, Low-Code Dashboards for Neo4j

NeoDash, a low-code dashboard builder, empowers users to easily create interactive visualizations of their graph data. Seamlessly integrated with Neo4j, NeoDash works natively with Cypher queries to build maps, charts, tables, and more, making data insights accessible to everyone. NeoDash allows users to:

Create visualizations with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface
Build dashboards directly from Cypher queries
Customize and add interactivity to their visualizations
Publish dashboards for secure, read-only sharing with stakeholders

Neo4j now offers enterprise-level support for NeoDash, representing a significant milestone in its journey from a Neo4j Labs project to a fully integrated product. While the code remains in Labs, users can access official Neo4j Support and Professional Services to assist with their NeoDash deployments. As NeoDash continues to evolve, users can look forward to its full productization in 2025, further strengthening its position within the Neo4j ecosystem.

A sample Neo4j dashboard demonstrating how to build visual planners for rail networks and other complex systems.

Scale Up and Out With Larger AuraDB Instances and Read-Only Secondaries

We now offer AuraDB instances with up to 512GB of RAM, a 33% capacity increase, allowing you to work with more extensive graph datasets and accelerate complex queries and analytical tasks. These larger instances are ideal for memory-intensive workloads such as:

High-frequency financial trading
Processing and analyzing large-scale genomic data for biology research
High-performance computing (HPC) workloads like complex climate models
Modeling and optimizing complex supply chain networks
Analyzing complex transaction patterns to identify fraudulent activities

In addition to vertical scaling, you can now horizontally scale your AuraDB instances with up to 15 Read-Only Secondaries. This new feature improves read performance and throughput by efficiently distributing read-heavy workloads across secondaries. Read-Only Secondaries are ideal for applications with high read-to-write ratios. They ensure consistent performance as your data grows by routing read queries to secondaries and non-leader primaries within the same region. Secondaries are a cost-effective way to scale read capacity without compromising on latency.

A Highly Secure, Comprehensive Graph Solution With Advanced Analytics to Meet Enterprise Needs

The new enhancements to Neo4j AuraDB complement the existing enterprise security features, creating a comprehensive solution for GenAI and advanced analytics. We offer advanced security features, including Customer Managed Keys (CMK) and Security Log Forwarding. CMK gives customers full control over their encryption keys, including policies, rotation, and versions, ensuring that only authorized users have access. CMK helps organizations meet essential regulatory and industry standards, including GDPR and HIPAA, and it’s now supported on any cloud provider.

Creating Customer Managed Key with Encryption Key ARN.

Security Log Forwarding allows users to stream security logs in real time to a cloud project owned by their organization. This enhances threat detection and response by providing a unified view of the organization’s security posture. Users can set up and configure Security Log Forwarding for AuraDB, where the destination is a cloud logging service. The supported targets are Google Cloud Logging in GCP, Cloudwatch in AWS, and Log Analytics in Microsoft Azure. A separate log-forwarding process can be defined per cloud provider and region if multiple regions are in use. The latest AuraDB enhancements reflect Neo4j’s ongoing commitment to our product vision: to deliver an easy-to-use, premium, and trusted cloud-native graph database and analytics offering that’s available on any cloud, ultimately enabling developers, data analysts, and data scientists to build accurate and explainable AI applications. These innovations build on recent efforts, which include:

Partnering with Snowflake to bring graph data science into the AI data cloud
Collaborating with Microsoft to natively integrate Neo4j’s graph capabilities into the Microsoft Fabric analytics platform and Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
Bringing graphRAG capabilities for GenAI to Google Cloud
Introducing new resources for GenAI applications, like the Neo4j LLM Knowledge Graph Builder.

With this momentum, we’re ready to accelerate the pace of graph technology breakthroughs even further in the year ahead. Start your graph journey with AuraDB today and experience the benefits of Neo4j’s enterprise-ready graph technology. Check out our comprehensive guide, explore hands-on training on GraphAcademy, engage with our vibrant developer community, and access drivers and APIs to accelerate your graph success.