Ontotext GraphDB / Graphwise
RDF graph database with real-time inference, now a component of the Graphwise Platform. Ontotext and Semantic Web Company (PoolParty) joined forces as Graphwise in 2024; Oakley Capital took a majority stake in 2026.
Acquired · Verified 2026-10-29 · fresh as of 2026-10-29 · 44 cited facts, 6 with a third-party source · 2 recorded changes · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Type
- RDF store + real-time inference vendor fix
- Tier
- T1
- Section
- Knowledge-graph platforms
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- License
- proprietary; GraphDB Free (free-to-use non-commercial option) and Enterprise Edition; every edition needs a licence file (Free licence emailed on request) vendor fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- Enterprise only third-party fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-29 fix
- Layer
- model-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial vendor fix
When to use
Optimised for: relationship modeling + reasoning + governance over pure vector
Anti-fit: not for purely-vector or simple-RAG use cases (graph adds setup cost)
Pros & cons
Pros
Best-in-class RDF / SPARQL engine with native reasoning; long-running European / public-sector adoption.
Cons
Property-graph workloads are not a strength; smaller user base than Neo4j.
Claims & capabilities
First triplestore to pass both LDBC SNB Interactive (1.5B edges, SF30) and Semantic Publishing benchmarks; merged with Semantic Web Company to form Graphwise (October 2024) — combined customer count >200 across PoolParty + GraphDB
Technical surface
- API surface
- REST + SPARQL 1.1 endpoint + RDF4J Workbench
- Backend storage
- custom (RDF triple store)
- Deployment
- Both
- Embedding model
- BYO
- Multi-tenancy
- hard-isolation
- MCP
- yes — GraphDB 11.4 supports custom MCP prompt templates (defined via REST) for AI agents
- A2A
- no Google A2A (Agent2Agent) integration documented as of 2026-05.
- OpenTelemetry
- first-class — Prometheus / OTel
Alternatives to Ontotext GraphDB / Graphwise → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other knowledge-graph platforms in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Neo4j T1
Property graph DB with Cypher; native vector search; Aura Agent + MCP server for graph-as-memory. $100M GenAI investment in 2025.
- Amazon Neptune Analytics T1
Vector index on graph nodes queryable via openCypher. Mem0 integration GA 2025; Cognee integration for agentic RAG. Combines semantic recall with multi-hop traversal in one managed service.
- FalkorDB T2
Native GraphRAG SDK. Graph-memory backend for Mem0; MCP server via Graphiti integration; context graphs for long-term agent memory.
- ArangoDB T1
HybridGraphRAG combines vector search, graph traversal, full-text in one AQL query. ArangoGraphML for ML pipelines; LangChain integration. The company now brands itself Arango (Arango Contextual Data Platform unifying graph, vector, document and search), with ArangoDB as its database.
- Kuzu T2
Embedded property-graph database (Cypher) with a built-in vector index and full-text search, widely used as an embedded store for agent memory and GraphRAG. The kuzudb/kuzu repository was archived on 2025-10-10 after Apple acquired the company; 0.11.3 is the final release and earlier releases remain usable.
- Memgraph T2
In-memory GraphRAG engine. Memgraph 3.0 adds native vector search alongside graph traversal. LangChain toolkit.
Sources (43 cited facts, 6 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is RDF store + real-time inference vendor
- What it does & what's distinct RDF graph database with real-time inference, now a component of the Graphwise Platform. … vendor
- Claims / benefits First triplestore to pass both LDBC SNB Interactive (1.5B edges, SF30) and Semantic Publ… vendor
- Modalities text vendor
- Created 2008 third-party
- License proprietary; GraphDB Free (free-to-use non-commercial option) and Enterprise Edition; ev… vendor
- Mindshare Specialist graph community (RDF/SPARQL ecosystem); Gartner Peer Insights reviews; Linked… third-party
- Funding Majority stake acquired by Oakley Capital (2026); terms undisclosed vendor
- Pricing Enterprise only third-party
- Deployment Both vendor
- HQ EU third-party
- Founders / pedigree Atanas Kiryakov (Ontotext); Andreas Blumauer & Martin Kaltenboeck (Semantic Web Company … vendor
- Memory volume / scale no scale claim vendor
- Performance No public ANN-Benchmarks entry; vendor publishes Berlin SPARQL Benchmark and W3C BSBM 10… vendor
- API surface REST + SPARQL 1.1 endpoint + RDF4J Workbench vendor
- Backend storage custom (RDF triple store) vendor
- Multi-tenancy hard-isolation vendor
- Encryption at-rest + in-transit vendor
- SSO / RBAC SSO + RBAC vendor
- Embedding model BYO vendor
- Versioning immutable append-log vendor
- Tombstoning soft-delete only vendor
- Schema evolution schema with migration vendor
- Namespace primitives per-tenant vendor
- Contradiction handling always overwrite (last-write-wins) vendor
- Forgetting policy none (permanent) vendor
- MCP support yes — GraphDB 11.4 supports custom MCP prompt templates (defined via REST) for AI agents vendor
- OTel first-class — Prometheus / OTel vendor
- Import / export RDF (all standard serializations), JSON-LD vendor
- Validated verticals financial-services, healthcare, legal, government, internal IT, KM vendor
- Time to running <1hr (Docker / managed cloud) to <1week (enterprise procurement) vendor
- Anti-fit not for purely-vector or simple-RAG use cases (graph adds setup cost) vendor
- Optimised for relationship modeling + reasoning + governance over pure vector vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure BYO LLM; bundled graph store; some require additional vector index vendor
- Pros Best-in-class RDF / SPARQL engine with native reasoning; long-running European / public-… vendor
- Cons Property-graph workloads are not a strength; smaller user base than Neo4j. vendor
- Project & sources graphwise.ai GraphDB vendor
- cost-pricing-model subscription third-party
- cost-last-verified 2026-06-29 third-party
- architecture-deployment-locus hybrid vendor
- licensing-bucket commercial vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product platform vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup model-infra repo
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-29
- License “not applicable — not OSS” → “proprietary; GraphDB Free (free-to-use non-commercial option) and Enterprise Edition; every edition needs a licence file (Free licence emailed on request)” source
- 2026-10-27
- Funding / ownership “~€41M total (€30M valuation + €11M invested by Integral/PortfoLion/Carpathian/EBRD in 2022-2023)” → “Majority stake acquired by Oakley Capital (2026); terms undisclosed” source
- MCP support first recorded as “yes — GraphDB 11.4 supports custom MCP prompt templates (defined via REST) for AI agents” source