#5 in DatabasesUpdated 2026-08

Chroma

by Chroma · Open-source search infrastructure for AI

69.9 — BenchRank score out of 100

Homepage
Pricing page

Visit website See full Databases ranking

Overview

Chroma is an open-source (Apache 2.0) search engine for AI applications, covering vector, sparse vector (BM25, SPLADE), full-text, regex and metadata search. Indexes are built on object storage such as S3 or GCS, with memory and SSD caching and automatic tiering. It can be self-hosted or run serverlessly on Chroma Cloud, using Python, TypeScript or Rust clients.

Best for: Developers building AI search and retrieval who want an open-source engine with a hosted option
Pricing: Starter is $0/month with $5 in free credits then usage-based pricing ($2.50 per GiB written, $0.33 per GiB stored per month, $0.0075 per TiB queried, $0.09 per GiB returned); Team is $250/month plus usage, and Enterprise is custom-priced.
Runs on: Self-hostedCLI

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

Apache 2.0 open source, runnable on your own infrastructure
Vector, sparse, full-text, regex and metadata search in one system
Warm query latency p50 20ms at 100k vectors (384 dim)
Free Starter plan with $5 credits; Python and JS/TS clients

Trade-offs

Cold queries are far slower than warm: p99 1.5s versus 57ms
Stated caps of 5M records and 10 concurrent reads per collection
Team plan costs $250/month before any usage charges
Four separate usage meters make monthly cost hard to predict

Pricing

Published plans from Chroma’s own pricing page, in USD. Usage charges and add-ons may apply on top.

Chroma pricing tiers, monthly rates in USD
Plan	Monthly	Includes
Starter	Freeper month plus usage	$5 in free credits, then usage-based pricing 10 databases 10 team members Community Slack
Team	$250per month plus usage	$100 credits, then usage-based pricing 100 databases, 30 team members Slack support and SOC II Volume-based discounts
Enterprise	Contact sales	Unlimited databases and team members Single tenant and BYOC clusters Dedicated support and SLAs

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

MCP support: 60 out of 100
API quality: 45 out of 100
Documentation: 80 out of 100
Agent friendliness: 73 out of 100
Pricing transparency: 100 out of 100
Changelog: 55 out of 100
Marketing site structure: 90 out of 100
Operational trust: 75 out of 100

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

Openness: 85 out of 100
Maintenance: 100 out of 100

This doesn’t look right — report a problem with Chroma’s score

Alternatives in Databases

Ranked 1
87.7 — BenchRank score out of 100
Supabase
Supabase · Hosted Postgres with auth, storage, realtime and edge functions
Best for: Developers who want a hosted Postgres database with auth, storage and APIs in one platform
Ranked 2
80.3 — BenchRank score out of 100
Neon
Neon Postgres · Serverless Postgres with branching, auth, functions and object storage
Best for: Developers wanting serverless Postgres with branching for app, agent and per-tenant workloads.
Ranked 3
75.7 — BenchRank score out of 100
Databend
Databend · Open-source Rust data warehouse for SQL, search and vector workloads
Best for: Data teams wanting SQL analytics, full-text and vector search in one warehouse over object storage