Introduction

Welcome to the Neo4j Cypher® Manual.

Cypher® is Neo4j’s declarative query language, allowing users to unlock the full potential of property graph databases.

This manual covers Cypher® 25. As of Neo4j 2025.06, all new Cypher® features are exclusively added to Cypher 25, while Cypher 5 is frozen. As of Neo4j 2026.02, new databases explicitly set Cypher® 25 as their query language in their configuration file. For information about how to how to use Cypher® 25, see Select Cypher version. For information about new features added to Cypher® 25, see Additions, deprecations, removals, and compatibility.

The Cypher® Manual aims to be as instructive as possible to readers from a variety of backgrounds and professions, such as developers, administrators, and academic researchers.

If you are new to Cypher® and Neo4j, you can visit the Getting Started Guide → Cypher chapter. Additionally, Neo4j GraphAcademy has a variety of free courses tailored for all levels of experience.

For a reference of all available Cypher® features, see the Cypher Cheat Sheet.

For a downloadable PDF version of the Cypher® Manual, visit the Neo4j documentation archive.

This introduction will cover the following topics:

License: Creative Commons 4.0