Chroma
Vector & Search · Free
AI-native open-source embedding database
At a glance
- Made by
- Chroma
- Korean
- None (English and a few others only)
- API
- Yes
- Available on
- API, CLI, Web
- Open source
- Apache-2.0
- GitHub
- 29,494 stars · Apache-2.0
What is Chroma?
Chroma is open-source AI data infrastructure that supports vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. It stores embeddings and metadata and provides dense, sparse, and hybrid search, metadata filtering, and multimodal search across text, images, and more. You can run it locally, self-host it, or use Chroma Cloud, a serverless managed service built on object storage. For enterprises, it offers BYOC (your own VPC), multi-region replication, and point-in-time recovery.
- Vector (semantic similarity) search
- Sparse vector search (BM25, SPLADE)
- Full-text and regex search
- Metadata filtering and facets
- Forking (dataset versioning, A/B testing)
- Multimodal search
- CLI
- Chroma Cloud serverless·BYOC
Who uses Chroma and for what
- Agentic search (improves results through iterative search)
- Supports coding agents with codebase indexing
Pricing
What you get for free — Yes (Starter $0/month + usage, $5 free credit)
| Plan | Price | Main limits |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $0/mo | + usage, $5 free credit, 10 DBs, 10 team members |
| Team | $250/mo | + usage, $100 credit (does not roll over), 100 DBs, 30 team members, SOC II |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Custom pricing, unlimited DBs and team members, single-tenant/BYOC, SLA |
| Writes (usage) | $2.5 | per GiB written |
| Storage (usage) | $0.33 | per GiB-month |
| Reads (usage) | $0.008 | per TiB read |
| Network (usage) | $0.09 | per GiB returned |
Checked on the official pages on 2026-10-14. Prices and features can change, so check the official site again before paying. · Official pricing page
AI tools similar to Chroma (alternatives)
Chroma vs. alternatives at a glance
| AI | Pricing | Combos on the map | Connected tools | Free | Cheapest monthly | Korean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chroma | Free | 0 | 5 | Yes | $250/mo | No |
| Milvus | Free | 0 | 5 | No | — | — |
| pgvector | Free | 0 | 5 | — | — | — |
| Pinecone | Free + paid | 0 | 5 | Yes | $20/mo | No |
| Qdrant | Free | 0 | 5 | Yes | — | No |
3 of these 5 tools have a free plan. Cheapest paid plan: Pinecone ($20/mo).
Combo and connection counts are based on the relationships recorded on AI Galaxy Map (2026-10-26); they are not a quality ranking.
Chroma on AI Galaxy Map
- One of 12 AI tools in the Vector & Search field.
- Connected to 5 other tools — #1 in its field.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use Chroma for free?
Yes (Starter $0/month + usage, $5 free credit). Prices can change, so check the official site before paying.
What AI can I use instead of Chroma?
Tools that do the same job, such as Milvus, pgvector, Pinecone, Qdrant, are connected to it on the map.
Can I use Chroma in Korean?
None (English and a few others only)
Sources (official pages)
- https://www.trychroma.com/
- https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/introduction
- https://www.trychroma.com/pricing/
- https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma
Checked on the official pages on 2026-10-14. Prices and features can change, so check the official site again before paying.