Slater: A Low-Memory Graph Database for Massive Read-Heavy Graphs
Slater – Low-memory graphdb designed for read-heavy graphs
I built Slater to solve the biggest complaint about graph databases: they don't scale past what fits in RAM. Unlike competitors that require massive memory for large graphs, Slater serves hundreds of millions of nodes from just a few hundred megabytes of RAM. It uses a disk-native approach with Bolt protocol support, allowing you to use standard neo4j drivers while keeping memory costs predictable regardless of graph size.
The most common complaint about graph databases is that they don't scale past what you can hold in RAM.
- valentynkit
The delta layer is the part I'd want more detail on: once you're doing frequent consolidations against a multi-GB immutable core, what does write ampflication look like? That's usually where "runs in low hundreds of MB" plans get expensive.
- rickkjp
Hi all - I just wanted to announce a low memory footprint FOSS graph db I've been working on (named Slater, after the Archer character). The most common complaint about Graph/GraphRAG DBs is the cost and memory footprint they consume: many depend on holding the whole dataset fully in RAM, which makes them expensive to run.
Slater starts with the premise of a fixed memory budget applied to an LRU cache of what's on disk, then uses ISAM blocks and DiskANN/Vamana/PQ to allow paging the contents of the graphs and vectors you need into that cache. It's designed around read-heavy-write-light cases, and can be backed either by local disk or by S3/GCS buckets with an optional sized local disk L2 cache as well.
Speaks standard Bolt, and is GDPR friendly (encryption at-rest and in-transit). Multi-user-multi-graph with ACLs, Rust-with-forbid-unsafe and NFS-friendly too (no mmaps). It's Apache licensed.
Please give it a try if you get a chance. Would love any suggestions or feedback.
Full disclosure: yes, it was authored by Claude Code, although I provided the storage model and design it used, along with code samples and influences from other open source projects like FalkorDB and Memgraph for Bolt wire-compatibility.
Thanks
- pbronez
How does "standard Bolt" relate to OpenCypher? Does Bolt support imply OpenCypher support?