Neo4j Fundamentals
Learn Neo4j from scratch: how graph databases work, nodes and relationships, and your first Cypher queries — a free, hands-on tutorial in your browser.
In this 1-hour course, you will learn
Neo4j Fundamentals is a beginner course that introduces graph databases and the principles that make Neo4j work. In around 60 minutes you will learn graph theory, the elements of a graph database, how to tell when Neo4j is the right tool, and the basics of CypherNeo4j's implementation of GQL, the ISO standard query language for graph databases. It is declarative: you describe the pattern to find, and the database decides how to find it. for reading and writing data.
Graphs describe the connected data that sits behind recommendations, fraud detection, network management, and knowledge graphs. Instead of splitting that data across rows and join tables, a graph stores the relationshipsA named, directed connection between two nodes. Every relationship has a type, a start node and an end node. directly, so questions about how things connect become fast and natural to ask. This course gives you the vocabulary and the hands-on practice to start working with graphs, and it sets the foundation for everything else you will learn on GraphAcademy.
Graph Theory
Understand the mathematical foundations of graph databases, including vertices, edges, and how connected data models outperform relational tables for relationship-heavy queries.
Graph Structures
Learn to identify nodes, relationships, properties, and labels, and understand how these building blocks combine to represent real-world domains in a graph.
Elements of a Graph Database
Explore how Neo4j stores and indexes data natively as a graph, and understand what distinguishes a graph database from a document store or relational database.
Reading and Writing Data in Neo4j
Write Cypher queries to create nodes and relationships, match existing data, and update or delete records in a live Neo4j database.
Cypher Patterns
Build graph pattern expressions using ASCII-art syntax to traverse relationships, filter results by property, and return structured data from connected nodes.
3 modules, 1 hour.
Getting started with Neo4j
Getting started takes minutes, not hours: enroll for free, click start, and the course opens a real Neo4j database for you in the browser. There is nothing to download or install — you write and run CypherNeo4j's implementation of GQL, the ISO standard query language for graph databases. It is declarative: you describe the pattern to find, and the database decides how to find it. from the first lesson, and your progress saves automatically. If you want to keep practicing afterward, you can run the same exercises against your own free instance on Neo4j Aura, the fully managed cloud service.
Who this course is for
This course is for anyone new to graph databases. Developers, data engineers, data analysts, architects, and technical managers all take this as their starting point, but you do not need any of those titles to follow along. There are no prerequisites: you need no prior experience with Neo4j, no background in graph theory, and no coding experience, because every concept is introduced from first principles with examples drawn from data you already understand. If you have worked with relational databases before, you will find useful points of comparison throughout, but they are not required to make sense of the material.
What you will do
This is a practical course, not a lecture. You will explore a real Neo4j database in the browser, run queries, and see the results as both tables and visual graphs so you can watch the structure of your data take shape.
Along the way you will write your first CypherNeo4j's implementation of GQL, the ISO standard query language for graph databases. It is declarative: you describe the pattern to find, and the database decides how to find it. statements, using them to read data by matching patterns of nodesA vertex in a graph. In a property graph it can carry labels and properties. and relationshipsA named, directed connection between two nodes. Every relationship has a type, a start node and an end node. and to create new data by adding nodes, relationships, and propertiesA named value stored on a node or a relationship.. You will also build a small graph data modelThe labels, relationship types and properties chosen to represent a domain. of your own, deciding what should be a node, what should be a relationship, and what belongs as a property. By the end you will have queried data, changed data, and modeled data, which is the core loop you repeat in every graph project, and you will know how to run Neo4j yourself so you can keep practicing after the course ends.
Where to go next
Once you have completed Neo4j Fundamentals, the natural next step is Cypher Fundamentals, which takes the CypherNeo4j's implementation of GQL, the ISO standard query language for graph databases. It is declarative: you describe the pattern to find, and the database decides how to find it. basics you learned here and covers reading and writing data in far more depth. From there, Graph Data Modeling Fundamentals teaches you how to design a graph model that answers your questions efficiently, and Importing Data Fundamentals shows you how to load data into Neo4j from external sources such as CSV files. This course is also the first step toward the Neo4j Certified Professional certification, a credential that demonstrates your Neo4j skills.
Posts from the GraphAcademy blog.
Relationship Uniqueness in Cypher, and When You Need WHERE NOT
Where to WHERE NOT and where to not WHERE NOT. Understand how Cypher follows relationships and when you need to exclude nodes from the result.
Write your first Cypher query without installing anything
Write your first Cypher queries in the browser on Relate, from finding an actor to creating a node, with nothing to install.
How to load Parquet files into Relate
Convert Parquet files to CSV with DuckDB, then load them into a Relate graph with LOAD CSV and typed properties from the command line.