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 5 — the default language for Neo4j databases. As of Neo4j 2025.06, Cypher 5 is in a frozen state; no new features will be added to it (though performance improvements and bug fixes may still be made). From Neo4j 2025.06 onward, all new Cypher features will be exclusively added to Cypher 25. For more details, see:

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 → Introduction to 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