Neo4j Admin and Neo4j CLI
Introduction
neo4j-admin and neo4j are command-line tools for managing and administering a Neo4j DBMS.
Both are installed as part of the product and can be executed with a number of commands.
The neo4j commands are equivalent to the most important commands in the neo4j-admin server category.
Both neo4j-admin and neo4j commands support the --help option, which prints the command’s usage and options, and the --version option, which prints the version of the command.
All admin command options can also be provided in a file and passed to the command using the @ prefix.
This is useful when the command line becomes too long to manage.
For example, neo4j-admin database import full @/path/to/your/<args-filename> mydb.
For more information, see Picocli → AtFiles official documentation.
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All admin commands must be invoked with the same user as Neo4j runs as. This guarantees that Neo4j will have full rights to start and work with the database files you use. |
The neo4j-admin tool
The neo4j-admin command-line tool is located in the bin directory.
General synopsis
neo4j-admin has the following general synopsis:
neo4j-admin [category] [command] [subcommand]
neo4j-admin commands per category
All administration commands, except for help and version, are organized into the following categories:
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dbms- DBMS-wide (for single and clustered environments) administration tasks -
server- server-wide administration tasks -
database- database-specific administration tasks -
backup- backup-specific tasks -
fleet- fleet-wide administration tasks
| Category | Command | Description |
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Sets the default admin user when no roles are present. |
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Sets the initial password of the initial admin user ( For details, see Set an initial password. |
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Enterprise Edition For details, see Unbind the |
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Starts DBMS server in the console. |
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Displays the server ID of an instance. The server ID can be used to specify a server in Cypher commands. |
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Accept the license agreement. Possible options are |
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Prints recommendations for Neo4j heap and page cache memory usage. For details, see Get initial memory recommendations. |
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Migrates server configuration from a previous version. For details, see Migrate configurations. |
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Produces a ZIP/TAR of the most common information needed for remote assessments. For details, see Generate a report about the system. |
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Restarts the server daemon. |
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Starts the server as a daemon. |
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Gets the status of the server. |
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Stops the server daemon. |
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Enterprise Edition For details, see Unbind a server. |
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Performs configuration validation without starting the server. For details, see Validate configurations. |
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A command whose subcommands can be used to install, uninstall, and update Neo4j as a Windows service. |
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Enterprise Edition Deprecated in 2025.01 For details, see Aggregate a database backup chain. Replaced by |
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Enterprise Edition For details, see Back up an online database |
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Checks the consistency of a database. For details, see Check database consistency. |
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Enterprise Edition For details, see Copy a database store. |
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Dumps a database into a single-file archive. For details, see Back up an offline database. |
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Imports a collection of CSV files. For details, see Import. |
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Prints information about a Neo4j database store. For details, see Display store information. |
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Loads a database from an archive created with the For details, see Restore a database dump. |
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Migrates a database from one store format to another or between versions of the same format. For details, see Migrate a database. |
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Enterprise Edition For details, see Restore a database backup. |
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Pushes a local database to a Neo4j Aura instance. For details, see Upload to Neo4j Aura. |
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Enterprise Edition |
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Lists the metadata stored in the header of backup files. For details, see Inspect the metadata of a backup file. |
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Introduced in 2025.01 For details, see Aggregate a database backup chain. |
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Infinigraph |
Validates a collection of sharded property database backups. For details, see Validate a sharded property database backup. |
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Introduced in 2026.05 |
The neo4j tool
The neo4j command-line tool is located in the bin directory.
neo4j commands
The command is an alias for the most important commands in the neo4j-admin server category.
neo4j command |
Equivalent neo4j-admin command |
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Version command
Version can be obtained by invoking the version command, --version command option, or its short alternative -V, on the root level of both neo4j and neo4j-admin commands.
For example, neo4j --version, neo4j-admin -V, neo4j-admin version, or neo4j version.
Help command
Help can be obtained by invoking the help command, --help command option, or its short alternative -h, with both neo4j and neo4j-admin commands.
--help and -h options can be invoked on any level, namely root, category, command, and subcommand.
For example, neo4j --help, neo4j [command] -h, neo4j-admin -h, neo4j-admin [category] --help, or neo4j-admin [category] [command] [subcommand] -h.
The help command can be invoked on any level except the last one, which means command-level for commands that do not have subcommands or subcommand level for commands with subcommands.
The help command also accepts a parameter.
For example, neo4j help, neo4j-admin help, neo4j-admin [category] help, neo4j-admin help [category], neo4j help [command], or neo4j-admin [category] [command ] help [subcommand].
Limitations
When using both a multi-value option and a positional parameter, the multi-value option is "greedy" and pulls in the next positional parameter via its convertor. This is a limitation of the underlying library, Picocli, and is not specific to Neo4j Admin. See Picocli → Variable Arity Options and Positional Parameters official documentation for more information.
Configuration
Administration operations use the configuration specified in the neo4j.conf file.
Sharing configuration between the DBMS and its administration tasks makes sense as most settings are the same.
In some cases, however, it is better to override some settings specified in neo4j.conf by configuring the tasks (instead of updating the config settings in the neo4j.conf file) because administration tasks generally use fewer resources than the DBMS.
For instance, if the page cache of your DBMS is configured to a very high value in neo4j.conf, and you want to override this because the admin tasks like backup do not need so much memory, you provide configuration for the admin tasks instead of updating the page cache setting in the neo4j.conf file.
neo4j-admin database import does not use server.memory.pagecache.size for import memory sizing.
Instead, use --max-off-heap-memory to tune the command’s off-heap working memory.
See Import → Import memory controls for details.
There are several options for overriding settings specified in the neo4j.conf file using administration tasks:
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--additional-configoption — almost all administration commands support the--additional-configoption, which you can use to provide a path (full path, local path, or symlinks) to a file with additional configuration. The file format should be the same as neo4j.conf (or neo4j-admin.conf). The file must be readable by the user running the admin command. -
neo4j-admin.conf — a configuration file located in the same directory as the
neo4j.conffile, which you can use to provide administration-task-specific settings. -
Some commands also support a command-specific configuration file. Such files are also looked for in the same directory as the neo4j.conf file. The following table lists command-specific configuration files:
Table 3. Command-specific configuration files Command Configuration file neo4j-admin database backupneo4j-admin-database-backup.confneo4j-admin database checkneo4j-admin-database-check.confneo4j-admin database copyneo4j-admin-database-copy.confneo4j-admin database dumpneo4j-admin-database-dump.confneo4j-admin database importneo4j-admin-database-import.confneo4j-admin database loadneo4j-admin-database-load.confneo4j-admin database migrateneo4j-admin-database-migrate.confneo4j-admin database restoreneo4j-admin-database-restore.conf
All four configuration sources are optional and settings for administration commands are resolved from them with the following descending priority:
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--additional-configoption -
command-specific configuration file
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neo4j-admin.conf -
neo4j.conf
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The commands for launching the DBMS, |
Environment variables
Neo4j Admin can also use the following environment variables:
| Environment variable | Description |
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Set to anything to enable debug output. |
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Neo4j home directory. |
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Path to the directory that contains neo4j.conf. |
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Set JVM maximum heap size during command execution. Takes a number and a unit, for example, 512m. |
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Additional JVM arguments. |
If set, HEAP_SIZE and JAVA_OPTS override all relevant settings specified in the configuration file.
Exit codes
When neo4j and neo4j-admin finish as expected, they exit with code 0.
A non-zero exit code means something undesired happened during command execution.
| Exit code | Description |
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Successful execution. |
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The command failed to execute. |
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The command failed to execute because the database is not running. |
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The command was invoked with incorrect options/parameters. See the printed usage for details. |
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An exception was thrown, not handled otherwise. |
The non-zero exit code can contain further information about the error, for example, see the backup command’s exit codes.
Command-line completion
From 5.4 onwards, Neo4j supports command-line completion.
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For Unix-based systems, the tab completion applies to the
neo4jandneo4j-admincommand line interfaces in terminals such as Bash and ZSH. -
For RPM and DEB packaged installations, the necessary files are automatically installed in
bash-completion. -
For tarball installations, the files are located in the bin/completion/ directory with detailed instructions for manual installation.
Glossary
- allocator
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A component in the cluster that allocates databases to servers according to the topology constraints specified and an allocation strategy.
- asynchronous replication
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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
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A fully-managed DBMS represented by a single instance ID, that is running in the Neo4j Aura cloud.
- auto-commit transaction
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An automatically committed transaction that contains a single query.
- Bolt protocol
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Bolt is a protocol used for interaction between Neo4j instances and drivers.
- bookmark
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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Software that interacts with a Neo4j server.
- commit
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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
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Composite databases are the means to access partitioned graph data with a single Cypher query.
- constraint
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Constraints are sets of data modeling rules that ensure the data is consistent and reliable.
- Cypher®
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Neo4j’s graph query language.
- data model
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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
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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
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Databases are the physical containers of graph data. Graphs are the logical structure of data in Neo4j.
- Database Management System
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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
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The prescribed property existence and datatypes for nodes and relationships.
- deallocate
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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)
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The number of relationships of a specific node; loops are counted twice.
- disaster recovery
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A manual intervention to restore availability of a cluster, or databases within a cluster.
- driver
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A software library that provides access to Neo4j from a particular programming language.
- election
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In the event that the Raft leader becomes unresponsive, followers automatically trigger an election and vote for a new leader.
- entity
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A node or a relationship.
- expression (Cypher)
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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
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Fabric is the architectural design of a unified system that provides a single access point to local or distributed graph data.
- fault tolerance
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A guarantee that a cluster can maintain a database’s persistence and availability in the event of one or more servers failing.
- follower
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A primary copy of a database acting as a follower, receives and acknowledges synchronous writes from the leader.
- Generative AI (GenAI)
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A type of artificial intelligence (AI) system that generates text, images, or other media in response to prompts.
- graph
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A logical representation of a set of nodes where some pairs are connected by relationships.
- index
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Data structure that improves read performance of a database.
- knowledge graph
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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
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Marks a node as a member of a named and indexed subset. A node may be assigned zero or more labels.
- leader
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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
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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
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A description of a specific pattern within a graph.
- node
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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
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A symbol representing a mathematical or logical operation.
- parameter
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Named value provided when running a Cypher statement.
- path
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A sequence of nodes and the relationships connecting them, that does not contain duplicate relationships. Several paths can match a pattern.
- pattern
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A specific arrangement of nodes and relationships that can be matched in a graph. A pattern follows a motif.
- perspective (Bloom)
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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Properties are key-value pairs that are used for storing data on nodes and relationships.
- query (Cypher)
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A statement that retrieves or writes information to a database.
- Raft group
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A group of servers that are participating in hosting a particular database in primary mode.
- Raft group member
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A server that is participating in a Raft group. A server can be a member of one or more groups.
- Raft log
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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
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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
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Distributing query load by creating additional database copies hosted in secondary mode (read-only).
- relationship
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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
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An asynchronously replicated copy of the database that provides read scaling within the cluster.
- seed
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A seed is a database dump or a full backup used to create a database on a cluster. This is sometimes called seeding.
- server
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A physical machine, a virtual machine, or a container running an instance of Neo4j. Servers can be standalone or part of a cluster.
- session
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A causally linked sequence of transactions.
- session consistency
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An alternative name for Neo4j’s causal consistency.
- standalone
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A single server running Neo4j and not part of a cluster.
- synchronous replication
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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
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A database used by Neo4j to store system information.
- tenant (Aura)
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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
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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
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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
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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).