Is Cassandra or Dgraph better?

Neither clearly leads. Cassandra starts at Free and Dgraph at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Cassandra or Dgraph?

Cassandra starts at Free and Dgraph at Free.

Does Cassandra or Dgraph run on more platforms?

Cassandra runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Dgraph runs on Linux, Mac, Docker, Web.

Can I use Cassandra for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Cassandra best used for?

Cassandra is most often used for real-time applications, content management, user profiles, mobile backends. Of those, real-time applications and content management are not what Dgraph is typically brought in for.

What can Cassandra do that Dgraph cannot?

Cassandra covers Linear Scalability, Fault Tolerance, Multi-datacenter Replication, Tunable Consistency. Dgraph covers Apache 2.0 licence, Generated GraphQL API, DQL query language, Predicate sharding.

Databases · head to head

Cassandra vs Dgraph

Cassandra

Databases

Manage massive amounts of data with linear scalability

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Dgraph

Databases

Apache 2.0 distributed graph database written in Go, maintained by Hypermode, queried through GraphQL or its own DQL language.

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Cassandra no support for joins across tables; Dgraph sharding is by predicate, so a single very hot predicate lives entirely in one Raft group and cannot be split further; adding nodes does not relieve it and the fix is a data model change.
They diverge on capability: Cassandra covers Linear Scalability, Dgraph covers Apache 2.0 licence.
Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cassandra and Dgraph actually diverge.

Attributes where Cassandra and Dgraph differ
Attribute	Cassandra	Dgraph
Pricing model	Unknown	freemium
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes	Linux, Mac, Docker, Web
Founded	2008	2016

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cassandra

Linear Scalability
Fault Tolerance
Multi-datacenter Replication
Tunable Consistency
CQL Query Language
Distributed Architecture
No Single Point of Failure
DataStax

Only in Dgraph

Apache 2.0 licence
Generated GraphQL API
DQL query language
Predicate sharding
Raft replication
Distributed ACID transactions
Written in Go
Full-text and geo indexing

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cassandra

Real-time applicationsnot Dgraph
Content managementnot Dgraph
User profilesnot Dgraph
Mobile backendsnot Dgraph
Cachingnot Dgraph

Dgraph

An application whose core data is a graph, such as permissions, social connections or product relationships, where the frontend already consumes GraphQLnot Cassandra
A knowledge graph that outgrew a single machine and needs storage distributed across nodes without a per-core licence negotiationnot Cassandra
Recommendation or fraud-detection features that traverse several hops at request time, where a relational join chain has become the bottlenecknot Cassandra
Teams that want a graph database they can read, fork and self-host under a permissive licence rather than a source-available onenot Cassandra

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cassandra

No support for joins across tables
No ACID transactions across multiple rows
Data model must be designed around query patterns upfront, making schema evolution difficult
Partition key misconfigurations can cause uneven data distribution and hotspots that degrade performance

Dgraph

Sharding is by predicate, so a single very hot predicate lives entirely in one Raft group and cannot be split further; adding nodes does not relieve it and the fix is a data model change.
Stewardship passed from Dgraph Labs to Hypermode after the original company stopped operating independently, so anyone building on it is betting on a second custodian rather than on the original team's roadmap.
The GraphQL layer is generated and opinionated, so anything it does not express drops you into DQL, which is a second language your team must learn and which no other database speaks.
The community is a fraction of Neo4j's, so operational answers, tuning experience, hiring and third-party tooling are all thinner, and unusual failure modes in a Zero and Alpha cluster leave you reading source rather than a forum.
There is no portable graph standard to migrate to; Cypher, Gremlin and SPARQL are all different query models, so the schema and every query is a rewrite if you later leave, and that cost grows with the application.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cassandra

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Cassandra review.

Dgraph

Free

CommunityFree
- Native GraphQL
- Graph queries
- Full-text search
Cloud$39/month
- Managed service
- Auto-scaling
- Enterprise support

Which should you pick?

Choose Cassandra if

You need linear scalability.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes.
You also want fault tolerance.

Cassandra review

Choose Dgraph if

You need apache 2.0 licence.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Mac, Docker, Web.
You also want generated graphql api.

Dgraph review

Questions people ask

Is Cassandra or Dgraph better?: Neither clearly leads. Cassandra starts at Free and Dgraph at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cassandra or Dgraph?: Cassandra starts at Free and Dgraph at Free.
Does Cassandra or Dgraph run on more platforms?: Cassandra runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Dgraph runs on Linux, Mac, Docker, Web.
Can I use Cassandra for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Cassandra best used for?: Cassandra is most often used for real-time applications, content management, user profiles, mobile backends. Of those, real-time applications and content management are not what Dgraph is typically brought in for.
What can Cassandra do that Dgraph cannot?: Cassandra covers Linear Scalability, Fault Tolerance, Multi-datacenter Replication, Tunable Consistency. Dgraph covers Apache 2.0 licence, Generated GraphQL API, DQL query language, Predicate sharding.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cassandra: Does Cassandra support joins between tables?

No. Cassandra does not support joins or foreign keys. The data model requires denormalization, meaning data must be duplicated across tables to support different query patterns.

Source

Dgraph: Is Dgraph open source?

Yes. The current repository is Apache 2.0, which is a permissive OSI licence, and the project is at v25 under Hypermode's maintenance.

Cassandra: Does Cassandra offer ACID transactions?

No. Cassandra provides only row-level atomicity and isolation, not full ACID transactions across multiple rows or tables. It uses lightweight transactions via Paxos for per-row compare-and-set operations.

Source

Dgraph: Is it really GraphQL?

It serves a generated GraphQL API, which is real GraphQL for clients. Its native language, DQL, resembles GraphQL syntactically but is Dgraph's own language and is not the GraphQL specification.

Cassandra: What programming languages can connect to Cassandra?

Cassandra supports official drivers for multiple languages including Python, Java, Node.js, and Go, allowing applications to communicate via the native Cassandra protocol.

Source

Dgraph: How does it compare to Neo4j?

Neo4j has the larger ecosystem, Cypher, and far more operational precedent. Dgraph distributes storage across nodes by default and gives you a GraphQL endpoint without writing resolvers. The choice usually turns on whether you need horizontal scale and a GraphQL surface more than you need ecosystem depth.

Cassandra: Can I deploy Cassandra in the cloud?

Yes. Cassandra can run on any cloud platform (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) via Docker, virtual machines, or managed services like DataStax Astra DB, which provides a fully managed DBaaS option.

Source

Dgraph: What does a production cluster look like?

At minimum a set of Zero nodes for coordination and a replicated set of Alpha nodes for data, typically three of each for fault tolerance, which is a meaningfully larger operational footprint than a single graph server.

Cassandra: Does Cassandra have a free option?

The open source Apache Cassandra is free. DataStax also offers Astra DB with a free tier providing up to 25GB storage and 25 million read/write operations per month.

Source

Dgraph: Who maintains it now?

Hypermode. Dgraph Labs, the original company, no longer operates it, and that change of custodian is the main non-technical risk to weigh.

Cassandra vs Dgraph

Cassandra

Dgraph

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Cassandra

Only in Dgraph

What people use each for

Cassandra

Dgraph

Where each one falls short

Cassandra

Dgraph

Pricing, plan by plan

Cassandra

Dgraph

Which should you pick?

Choose Cassandra if

Choose Dgraph if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Cassandra

More on Dgraph

Keep looking

Other head to heads