Upgrade Community to Enterprise

You can move from any Neo4j 2025-2026 version Community Edition to any Neo4j 2025-2026 version Enterprise Edition using the following steps:

  1. Stop the running Neo4j Community Edition server:

    bin/neo4j stop

  2. Backup the system and neo4j databases using the neo4j-admin database dump command:

    bin/neo4j-admin database dump neo4j
    bin/neo4j-admin database dump system

    By default, dumps are located at data/dumps/. Alternatively, the location can be defined via the conf/neo4j.conf setting server.directories.dumps.root.

  3. Uninstall the Neo4j Community Edition server.

  4. Download and install the Neo4j Enterprise Edition server following the instructions in the Neo4j Operations Manual → Installation.

  5. Load the system and neo4j databases into the Neo4j Enterprise Edition server using neo4j-admin database load:

    bin/neo4j-admin database load neo4j --from-path=<path-to-community-neo4j-dump>
    bin/neo4j-admin database load system --from-path=<path-to-community-system-dump>

  6. Navigate to the Neo4j Enterprise Edition server and start it:

    bin/neo4j start

    The system database is automatically upgraded when safe.

  7. Drop the existing neo4j database that was created by default on startup. Note, this does not remove any store files loaded via neo4j-admin database load.

    DROP DATABASE neo4j;

  8. Create the neo4j database using the store files loaded via neo4j-admin database load:

    CREATE DATABASE neo4j;