Self-Hosted (Open Source)
Free
- Apache 2.0 license
- Local deployment
- Docker support
- Single-node architecture
Chroma — Vector Databases Platform
Founded 2022|San Francisco, CA|11-50 people|Open Source
What is Chroma?
Chroma is an open-source embedding database designed for simplicity and developer experience, licensed under Apache 2.0. It provides a lightweight, easy-to-use API for storing, querying, and filtering embeddings locally or in the cloud.
Chroma is the default vector store in many LLM frameworks like LangChain and LlamaIndex, making it extremely popular for prototyping and building RAG applications quickly. The managed Chroma Cloud service offers serverless deployment with usage-based pricing, while the self-hosted version runs on a single node at no cost.
The company achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance for enterprise deployments and offers Chroma Cloud with features including BYOC in your VPC, multi-cloud/multi-region replication, and point-in-time recovery. Chroma is rated 4.2/5 on G2.
Key features
Core capabilities this platform advertises.
- Lightweight embedded vector database
- Python-native API
- Runs in-process without a server
- Simple document and query interface
- Open-source and free
Strengths and tradeoffs
What this tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.
Pros
- Extremely simple to set up and beginner-friendly
- Apache 2.0 open source with free self-hosting
- Default vector store in LangChain and LlamaIndex frameworks
- Cloud reads are effectively free ($0.0075/TiB)
- SOC 2 Type II compliance for enterprise deployments
Cons
- Single-node architecture limits scalability for self-hosted deployments
- Performance may not match Pinecone at very large scale
- Limited advanced documentation for complex use cases
- Enterprise features like SSO are less mature than competitors
Plans & pricing
What's included in each plan, and how the tiers compare.
Cloud Starter
$0 + $5 free credits
Usage-based
- Usage-based pricing
- $0.33/GB/month storage
- $2.50/GB data ingestion
- Near-free reads ($0.0075/TiB)
Cloud Pro
Usage-based with volume discounts
- Higher limits
- Priority support
- Volume-based discounts
Enterprise
Custom
Contact sales for a quote
- SOC 2 Type II
- BYOC in your VPC
- Custom SLAs
- 24/7 support
Common use cases
Python developers who want a simple, embedded vector database for prototyping
- Local development and prototyping
- Small to medium RAG applications
- Embedded vector search in Python apps
- Research and experimentation
- Serverless and edge deployments
Using Chroma with Respan
Respan integrates with Chroma to provide observability into embedding quality and retrieval performance. Teams can monitor how Chroma-powered RAG applications perform in production and identify opportunities to improve retrieval accuracy.
- Monitor Chroma query performance and retrieval relevance
- Evaluate embedding quality across different models
- Track storage costs and query patterns over time
- Identify retrieval gaps in RAG application workflows
Best Chroma alternatives & competitors
Top companies in Vector Databases you can use instead of Chroma.
Milvus
Billion-scale vector search
Pinecone
Fully managed serverless vector database
Qdrant
High-performance open-source vector search
Supabase
pgvector hosting
Weaviate
Open-source vector database
Neo4j
Native graph database with Cypher query language
MongoDB Atlas Vector Search
Elasticsearch
Redis Vector
ClickHouse
Analytics + vector
TigerGraph
Neon
Serverless Postgres
Vespa
LanceDB
Turbopuffer
SingleStore
ArangoDB
Compare Chroma
Side-by-side comparisons with other tools in this category.
Best integrations for Chroma
Companies from adjacent layers in the AI stack that work well with Chroma.
Last verified: March 1, 2026