Limit of labels on a node in Neo4j

Question

Is there a limit on the number of labels you can put on nodes in Neo4j? Also what are the ramifications of lots of labels on the performance of inserts? Thanks

Answer 1

In theory the number of labels is almost unlimited (not sure but I think it was Integer.MAX_VALUE). In practice you should have as few labels as reasonable on a single node. The first 4-5 (don't remember the exact number) labels are stored directly with the node. The remaining labels are stored in a different location internally. So reading a node having more than 4-5 labels might result in another IO operation.

Upon a write operation every labels will cause extra burden since labels are self-indexing and therefore Neo4j needs to write to the labelscanstore for that label.

Most graphs I've seen so far (and that's quire a few ;-) ) don't have more than 3 labels on a single node.