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 → 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:

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