Comparison · Build it yourself
Curiosity and metaphactory
Model the ontology, or connect the records
Curiosity gives you a finished context layer; metaphactory is a platform to model and explore a knowledge graph.
Your data · your environment
Who each tool is for
Different problems, honestly stated
Curiosity
For industrial and regulated teams whose knowledge sits in engineering systems and structured records, where the answer depends on how those records connect, and where the deployment has to run on their own infrastructure.
metaphactory
A knowledge graph platform from metaphacts, a German company, for modeling ontologies and building applications to explore and edit semantic data on RDF graph databases. It is used in engineering, manufacturing and life sciences by teams that work with a formal ontology.
How Curiosity compares
Where the boundary falls
metaphactory is a strong choice for a team that wants to own a formal ontology and the knowledge graph built from it. Curiosity starts from the records instead: connectors, enrichment, permissions and retrieval come with the system, so the graph is useful before anyone has written an ontology.
A finished layer, not a database
A graph store gives you somewhere to put the data. Curiosity ships the connectors, the enrichment, the retrieval and the permissions on top of it.
Weeks, not a modeling program
Building a context layer on raw graph infrastructure is a project measured in quarters and staffed with ontology expertise.
Search and AI included
Hybrid retrieval and model routing come with the system rather than being the next two things to integrate.
Side by side
Feature comparison
The same five questions, answered for both.
Deployment
Cloud or self-hosted, ready to use
Self-managed or cloud
Data model
Managed context layer and knowledge graph
Semantic knowledge graph on RDF
Industrial fit
Built for industrial and enterprise teams
Engineering and life sciences, ontology first
Data reach
70+ systems connected, and yours through a connector you write
Graph databases and loaded sources
Residency
EU hosted, or entirely your own infrastructure
Your choice
Customization
What your team can change
Your own code, interface, data model and configuration. metaphactory as its own documentation described it in October 2026. Where it says Not available, the vendor documents no such capability.
Your own code
C# endpoints, AI tools and tasks, compiled in Studio
Java backend extensions, JavaScript web components in apps
Your own interface
Your own front end in C#, deployed from git
Low code HTML5 templates and semantic UI components
Data model
Typed node and edge schemas you define
OWL ontologies and SHACL shapes you model
Configuration as code
Every change committed to git, pushed to your remote
Apps versioned in git, deployed as zip
APIs and SDKs
REST API, C# and Python library, connector SDK
REST APIs, SPARQL endpoint, query as a service
AI integration
What AI can build and reach
Whether AI can build on it, who reviews the result, and which models it runs. metaphactory as its own documentation described it in October 2026.
AI that builds
Sudo drafts endpoints, tools, schemas and screens
metis drafts ontologies, SPARQL queries and R2RML mappings
Review before it applies
Every change a diff a person approves, in a sandbox
Previews ontology changes for confirmation, auto confirm optional
Model choice
Any major provider, or an OpenAI compatible endpoint
OpenAI, Azure, Gemini, Mistral, Bedrock, Ollama, custom endpoints
Models on your servers
Open weights on your servers, or air gapped
Ollama or self hosted inference servers via endpoint override
Assistant permissions
Built in tools search as the user, per record
Agents use the signed in user's platform permissions
Agent protocols
MCP server and an OpenAI compatible API
MCP server and client, in beta
At Airbus, we developed the next generation of customer support AI assistance tools with Curiosity, enhancing our technical support’s ability to access and navigate vast data from multiple sources, including millions of documents.
Services Innovation Team
Airline Services at Airbus
Build it yourself
Other comparisons in this group
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Curiosity gives you a finished context layer; Neptune gives you a managed graph store.
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Curiosity gives you a finished context layer; GraphDB gives you a semantic database.
CompareYour data. Your infrastructure.