User auth providers
Enterprise Edition

Authentication and authorization can be controlled on a user level using Cypher by setting auth providers on users.

To use auth providers, you need to set the dbms.security.require_local_user configuration setting to true. This setting mandates that users with the relevant auth provider attached to them must exist in the database before they can authenticate and authorize with that auth provider.

User auth providers allow you to link externally-defined users (e.g., in a third-party ID provider like OIDC or LDAP) to the Neo4j internal user model. The internal model can define roles (authorization), SUSPENDED status, HOME DATABASE, and metadata such as the unique displayed name of the user. For consistency, you can also define native (password-based) auth using the auth provider syntax, including native-only users (i.e., users who can only authenticate with a password).

Use cases

User auth providers can be used for a variety of use cases, including:

Provisioning different auth providers (including native username/password auth) for different users.
Setting an arbitrary easy username for a user while using an external unique identifier (like sub for OIDC auths, which itself is not a user-friendly value).
Setting HOME DATABASE for externally authenticated users.
Setting SUSPENDED status for an externally authenticated user.
Using native authorization to manage roles for externally authenticated users.
- Using RBAC to directly grant roles to the user.
- Introduced in 2026.06 Assigning tags to the user and using tag-based ABAC to conditionally assign roles to the user. See Attribute-based access control (ABAC) for more information.
Retaining full control of which users can authenticate from within the database.

How it works

When a user authenticates, their identifying attributes are checked against the relevant property of the auth providers in the database. If there is a match, then the user is linked to the Neo4j user and authorized according to the DBMS security configuration settings that match the name of the matching auth provider.

How the matching lookup is done depends on the type of provider. For example:

For an OIDC provider, the claim configured by dbms.security.oidc.mysso.claims.username (default sub) is taken from the token and is used to look up an auth provider whose ID and provider properties match the sub and provider respectively of the OIDC provider.
For an LDAP provider, the dn is used to look up an auth provider with a provider property of ldap and an ID property that matches the supplied dn.
For the native (username/password) provider, the supplied username itself is used to look up the auth provider.

Enabling user auth providers mode

To enable user auth providers mode, set the configuration setting dbms.security.require_local_user to true. This setting mandates that users with the relevant auth provider attached to them must exist in the database before they can authenticate and authorize with that auth provider.

When the user authenticates, Neo4j searches for a user with a matching authentication provider. If a match is found, the user can log in and be authorized successfully.

Migrating to auth providers mode

If you have existing users in the database and want to migrate to auth providers mode, you can use the ALTER USER … SET AUTH command to attach an auth provider to each of them. Until you change dbms.security.require_local_user to true, this will not impact the users' ability to authenticate and authorize as they always have done.

Once the process of adding auth providers to your users finishes, you can set dbms.security.require_local_user to true and restart the DBMS to complete the migration. After this time, only users with a corresponding auth provider in the database will be able to authenticate and authorize.

Existing users created using the original CREATE USER … SET PASSWORD command implicitly have the native (username/password) auth provider, so you do not need to add it explicitly using SET AUTH.

To verify which auth providers are attached to a user, use the SHOW USERS WITH AUTH command.

Examples

For examples of how to use auth providers with different authentication providers, see the following sections:

Glossary

allocator: A component in the cluster that allocates databases to servers according to the topology constraints specified and an allocation strategy.
asynchronous replication: Asynchronous replication is used by secondary copies to poll for new transactions, which means they cannot be guaranteed to have received the most recent transactions. This enables efficient scale-out of read-performance.
Aura instance: A fully-managed DBMS represented by a single instance ID, that is running in the Neo4j Aura cloud.
auto-commit transaction: An automatically committed transaction that contains a single query.
Bolt protocol: Bolt is a protocol used for interaction between Neo4j instances and drivers.
bookmark: A marker the client can request from the cluster to ensure that it is able to read its own writes so that the application’s state is consistent and only databases that have a copy of the bookmark are permitted to respond.
category (Bloom): A category is based on a node label and is defined in a Perspective as a way of visually distinguishing nodes with the same label(s).
causal consistency: All servers in a cluster agree on the order in which transactions take place. The position of a server on the causal chain can be guaranteed using a bookmark.
cluster: A Neo4j DBMS that spans multiple servers working together to increase fault tolerance and/or read scalability. Databases on a cluster may be configured to replicate across servers in the cluster thus achieving read scalability or high availability.
client application: Software that interacts with a Neo4j server.
commit: A commit is the successful completion of a transaction, which ensures durability of any changes made. For more details, visit Operations Manual → Transaction management.
composite database: Composite databases are the means to access partitioned graph data with a single Cypher query.
constraint: Constraints are sets of data modeling rules that ensure the data is consistent and reliable.
Cypher®: Neo4j’s graph query language.
data model: A data model defines how information is organized in a database. A good data model will make querying and understanding your data easier. In Neo4j, the data models have a graph structure.
database: A database is a container used by the DBMS to manage and store graph data. The physical structure of data is controlled by the database.
database vs graph: Databases are the physical containers of graph data. Graphs are the logical structure of data in Neo4j.
Database Management System: Database Management System, or DBMS, capable of managing multiple databases. A DBMS may run on a single server, or span several servers configured as a cluster.
database schema: The prescribed property existence and datatypes for nodes and relationships.
deallocate: An act of removing a database from a server or a server from a cluster without loss of data or reduced fault tolerance.
degree (of a node): The number of relationships of a specific node; loops are counted twice.
disaster recovery: A manual intervention to restore availability of a cluster, or databases within a cluster.
driver: A software library that provides access to Neo4j from a particular programming language.
election: In the event that the Raft leader becomes unresponsive, followers automatically trigger an election and vote for a new leader.
entity: A node or a relationship.
expression (Cypher): A component of a Cypher query which produces values. It may be used in projections, as a predicate, or when setting properties on graph elements.
fabric: Fabric is the architectural design of a unified system that provides a single access point to local or distributed graph data.
fault tolerance: A guarantee that a cluster can maintain a database’s persistence and availability in the event of one or more servers failing.
follower: A primary copy of a database acting as a follower, receives and acknowledges synchronous writes from the leader.
Generative AI (GenAI): A type of artificial intelligence (AI) system that generates text, images, or other media in response to prompts.
graph: A logical representation of a set of nodes where some pairs are connected by relationships.
index: Data structure that improves read performance of a database.
knowledge graph: A specific type of graph that has an organizing principle so that a user (or a computer system) can reason about the underlying data. The organizing principle provides an additional layer of structure that adds context to support knowledge discovery.
label: Marks a node as a member of a named and indexed subset. A node may be assigned zero or more labels.
leader: A single primary copy of a database is designated as the leader. It receives all write transactions from clients and replicates writes synchronously to followers and asynchronously to secondary copies of the database.
main database: In terms of Neo4j Enterprise Studio, the database(s) containing the user’s data. Can exist in the same Neo4j deployment as the tool asset database.
motif: A description of a specific pattern within a graph.
node: A node represents an entity or discrete object in your graph data model. Nodes can be connected by relationships, hold data in properties, and are classified by labels.
operator: A symbol representing a mathematical or logical operation.
parameter: Named value provided when running a Cypher statement.
path: A sequence of nodes and the relationships connecting them, that does not contain duplicate relationships. Several paths can match a pattern.
pattern: A specific arrangement of nodes and relationships that can be matched in a graph. A pattern follows a motif.
perspective (Bloom): A Perspective defines a certain business view or domain that can be found in the target Neo4j graph. A single Neo4j graph can be viewed through different Perspectives, each tailored for a different business purpose.
primary: A copy of the database that is able to process write transactions and is eligible to be elected as a leader. It participates in fault tolerant writes as it is part of the majority required to acknowledge and commit write transactions.
primary vs secondary: In a cluster, databases can operate in either primary or secondary mode. Primary databases are able to process write and read transactions, ensuring fault tolerance. Secondary databases are replicated asynchronously from primaries, and their main purpose is to provide read scaling within the cluster.
project (Aura): An isolated environment in the unified Aura console that contains its own database instances, configurations, and resources. Preceded by tenant in the classic Aura console.
property: Properties are key-value pairs that are used for storing data on nodes and relationships.
query (Cypher): A statement that retrieves or writes information to a database.
Raft group: A group of servers that are participating in hosting a particular database in primary mode.
Raft group member: A server that is participating in a Raft group. A server can be a member of one or more groups.
Raft log: A shared log between all Raft group members that is guaranteed to be consistently updated and viewed by those members. The log contains both database data and operational state of the Raft group.
Raft protocol: The networking mechanism that enables a database to replicate its data across multiple servers to give high availability for accessing the data and high durability to the data stored.
read scaling: Distributing query load by creating additional database copies hosted in secondary mode (read-only).
relationship: A relationship represents a connection between nodes in your graph data model. Relationships connect a source node to a target node, hold data in properties, and are classified by type.
secondary: An asynchronously replicated copy of the database that provides read scaling within the cluster.
seed: A seed is a database dump or a full backup used to create a database on a cluster. This is sometimes called seeding.
server: A physical machine, a virtual machine, or a container running an instance of Neo4j. Servers can be standalone or part of a cluster.
session: A causally linked sequence of transactions.
session consistency: An alternative name for Neo4j’s causal consistency.
standalone: A single server running Neo4j and not part of a cluster.
synchronous replication: Synchronous replication requires the leader primary to replicate a transaction and block the commit until a quorum of the follower primaries acknowledges that the transaction is successfully replicated. Once the transaction is replicated, the commit is allowed to proceed. This ensures data durability and consistency within the cluster.
system database: A database used by Neo4j to store system information.
tenant (Aura): An isolated environment in the classic Aura console that contains its own database instances, configurations, and resources. Replaced by project in the unified Aura console.
tool asset database: In terms of Neo4j Enterprise Studio, the database where tools' assets are stored. This can be in the same Neo4j deployment as the main database(s) or in a separate deployment.
topology: A configuration that describes how the copies of a database should be spread across the servers in a cluster, see primary mode and secondary mode.
transaction: A transaction comprises a unit of work performed against a database. It is treated in a coherent and reliable way, independent of other transactions. Transactions comply with the ACID consistency model (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable).

User auth providersEnterprise Edition