SSL encryption in a Neo4j Docker container

Neo4j on Docker supports Neo4j’s native SSL Framework for setting up secure Bolt and HTTPS communications. To configure these settings in Docker, you either set them in the neo4j.conf file, or pass them to Docker as Docker environment variables.

Set up your certificate folders

Verify that you have SSL public certificate(s) and private key(s).

The certificates must be issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA), such as https://www.openssl.org/ or https://letsencrypt.org/.

The default file names are private.key and public.crt.
Create a local folder to store your certificates.

For example, $HOME/neo4j/certificates. This folder will be later mounted to /ssl of your container.
In your local folder (e.g. $HOME/neo4j/certificates), create a folder for the SSL policy of each of your communication channels that you want to secure. There, you will store your certificates and private keys.

It is recommended to use different certificates for the different communication channels (bolt and https).

In the following examples, <scope> substitutes the name of the communication channel.
```
$ mkdir $HOME/neo4j/certificates/<scope>
```
In each of your <scope> folders, create a /trusted and a /revoked folder for the trusted and revoked certificates.
```
$ mkdir $HOME/neo4j/certificates/<scope>/trusted
$ mkdir $HOME/neo4j/certificates/<scope>/revoked
```

Finally, you add your certificates to the respective <scope> folder.

The <scope> folder(s) should now show the following listings:

$ ls $HOME/neo4j/certificates/<scope>
-r-------- ... private.key
-rw-r--r-- ... public.crt
drwxr-xr-x ... revoked
drwxr-xr-x ... trusted

Configure SSL via neo4j.conf

In the neo4j.conf file, configure the following settings for the policies that you want to use:

# HTTPS SSL configuration
server.https.enabled=true
dbms.ssl.policy.https.enabled=true
dbms.ssl.policy.https.base_directory=certificates/https
dbms.ssl.policy.https.private_key=private.key
dbms.ssl.policy.https.public_certificate=public.crt


# Bolt SSL configuration
dbms.ssl.policy.bolt.enabled=true
dbms.ssl.policy.bolt.base_directory=certificates/bolt
dbms.ssl.policy.bolt.private_key=private.key
dbms.ssl.policy.bolt.public_certificate=public.crt

For more information on configuring SSL policies, see Configuration.

For more information on configuring network connectors, see Configure network connectors → Configuration options.

Example 1. A docker run command that launches a container with SSL policy enabled via neo4j.conf.

docker run \
    --publish=7473:7473 \ (1)
    --publish=7687:7687 \
    --user="$(id -u):$(id -g)" \ (2)
    --volume=$HOME/neo4j/certificates:/ssl \ (3)
    --volume=$HOME/neo4j/conf:/conf \ (4)
    neo4j:2026.08.1

1	The port to access the HTTPS endpoint.
2	Docker will be started as the current user (assuming the current user has read access to the certificates).
3	The volume that contains the SSL policies that you want to set up Neo4j to use.
4	The volume that contains the neo4j.conf file. In this example, the neo4j.conf is in the `$HOME/neo4j/conf` folder of the host.

Configure SSL via Docker environment variables

As an alternative to configuring SSL via the neo4j.conf file, you can set an SSL policy by passing its configuration values to the Neo4j Docker container as environment variables. For more information on how to convert the Neo4j settings to the form accepted by Docker, see Environment variables:

Example 2. A docker run command that launches a container with SSL policy enabled via Docker environment variables.

docker run \
    --publish=7473:7473 \ (1)
    --publish=7687:7687 \
    --user="$(id -u):$(id -g)" \ (2)
    --volume=$HOME/neo4j/certificates:/ssl \ (3)
    --env NEO4J_dbms_connector_https_enabled=true \ (4)
    --env NEO4J_dbms_ssl_policy_https_enabled=true \ (5)
    --env NEO4J_dbms_ssl_policy_https_base__directory=/ssl/https \ (6)
    neo4j:2026.08.1

1	The port to access the HTTPS endpoint.
2	Docker will be started as the current user (assuming the current user has read access to the certificates).
3	The volume that contains the SSL policies that you want to set up Neo4j to use.
4	The HTTPS connector is disabled by default. Therefore, you must set `server.https.enabled` to `true`, for Neo4j to be able to listen for incoming connections on the HTTPS port. However, for the Bolt SSL policy, you do not have to pass this parameter as the Bolt connector is enabled by default.
5	The SSL policy that you want to set up for Neo4j.
6	The base directory under which SSL certificates and keys are searched for. Note that the value is the docker volume folder /ssl/https and not the /certificate/https folder of the host.

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).