Our verdict
We have not reviewed Chroma yet
No one at Enterprise DNA has checked this listing against its sources. The description comes from public listings gathered automatically. Any fact below shows where it came from and when it was last checked.
From the listing
About Chroma
Chroma is an open-source vector database written in Rust that stores and retrieves embeddings for AI applications. It provides search infrastructure for semantic similarity queries, enabling developers to build retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and vector-based search features without managing complex infrastructure.
Best for
Developers building RAG systems and semantic search features who want a straightforward, open-source vector store
Use cases
- Building RAG pipelines that retrieve relevant documents for LLM context
- Implementing semantic search across unstructured text or image embeddings
- Storing and querying high-dimensional vectors from embedding models
Notes
28,173 stars on GitHub. Last updated 2026-06-01. Licensed Apache-2.0.
Pros
- Open-source with active community support (28k+ GitHub stars)
- Lightweight and easy to integrate into Python applications
- Handles embedding storage and similarity search out of the box
Cons
- Rust backend may require additional deployment considerations for some teams
- Limited to vector operations, does not handle traditional relational queries
- Scaling to very large datasets may require external infrastructure decisions
Key facts
What we have checked
- Latest version
- 1.5.9 (released 5 May 2026)
- GitHub stars
- 29,382
Each value shows when we last confirmed it and where it came from. Values we have not confirmed are left out, never guessed.
Stars and usage
How Chroma is growing
28,173 to 29,382
Alternatives
Alternatives to Chroma
| Record | Type | How we know | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| AquilaDBAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| AwadbAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| deeplakeAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| LancedbAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| MilvusAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| pgvectorAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| PineconeAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| QdrantAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| RivestackAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| StatewaveAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| VearchAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| VectorDBAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
| WeaviateAlternative to this | Open source | Named in the listing | Not dated |
Compare
Compare Chroma side by side
Sources
Where this comes from
- GitHubOfficial
- github api via nightly crawl, recovered from git history 20e874270887c1008f860ee0198e461a23c9e438Registry
A source shows what was published when we checked it. It does not certify security, performance or a working installation. Read our method.
Changelog
What changed
Released 1.5.9
Released cli-1.4.4
Released foundation-cli-v0.1.0-alpha.3
Released 1.5.8
Released 1.5.7
Released cli-1.4.3
Released 1.5.6
Released cli-1.4.2
Released 1.5.5
Released latest
Open-source & AI alternatives
Swap-in tools that solve the same job. Weigh the trade-offs before you commit.
Milvus
Community
Milvus is a high-performance, cloud-native vector database built for scalable vector ANN search
pgvector
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Open-source vector similarity search for Postgres
Qdrant
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Qdrant - High-performance, massive-scale Vector Database and Vector Search Engine for the next generation of AI. Also available in the cloud https://cloud.qdrant.io/
Weaviate
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Weaviate is an open-source vector database that stores both objects and vectors, allowing for the combination of vector search with structured filtering with the fault tolerance an
AquilaDB
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An easy to use Neural Search Engine. Index latent vectors along with JSON metadata and do efficient k-NN search.
Awadb
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AI Native database for embedding vectors
deeplake
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Deeplake is AI Data Runtime for Agents. It provides serverless postgres with a multimodal datalake, enabling scalable retrieval and training.
Lancedb
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Developer-friendly OSS embedded retrieval library for multimodal AI. Search More; Manage Less.
Milvus
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Milvus is a high-performance, cloud-native vector database built for scalable vector ANN search
pgvector
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Open-source vector similarity search for Postgres
Pinecone
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Search through billions of items for similar matches to any object, in milliseconds. It’s the next generation of search, an API call away.
Qdrant
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Qdrant - High-performance, massive-scale Vector Database and Vector Search Engine for the next generation of AI. Also available in the cloud https://cloud.qdrant.io/
Rivestack
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Managed pgvector on dedicated PostgreSQL with NVMe storage. 2,000 QPS at sub-4ms p50, from $35/month, migration help from Supabase, Neon, Pinecone, and self-hosted.
Statewave
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Open-source memory runtime for AI agents — reproducible, provenance-tagged context bundles instead of query-time retrieval. Apache-2.0, self-hosted on Postgres + pgvector, Python +
Vearch
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Distributed vector search for AI-native applications
VectorDB
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A Python vector database you just need - no more, no less.
Pairs with
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Clip-as-a-service
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🏄 Scalable embedding, reasoning, ranking for images and sentences with CLIP
currentslab/awesome-vector-search
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Collections of vector search related libraries, service and research papers
ragfresh
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Detect stale, drifted, and ghost documents in RAG vector indexes
RagTune
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EXPLAIN ANALYZE for RAG retrieval — inspect, debug, benchmark, and tune your retrieval layer
VDP
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🔮 Instill Core is a full-stack AI infrastructure tool for data, model and pipeline orchestration, designed to streamline every aspect of building versatile AI-first applications
Airweave
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Open-source context retrieval layer for AI agents
Semantic Cache Router
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Distributed semantic cache and stateful routing system that cuts LLM API costs by returning cached responses for semantically similar queries. Uses ANN vector search (cosine ≥ 0.8)
semantic-coverage
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Automated detection of knowledge gaps and blind spots in RAG vector stores.
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