Chroma free tier includes Open-source AI-native embedding database — Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits… Catalogue date October 2026. Compare with 7 alternatives in Databases.
Subtypes in Databases:vector — stores embeddings and answers similarity queries as its primary access path. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://www.trychroma.com/, where it says: “Fast, serverless, and scalable infrastructure supporting vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search.”How we use this.
Limits, pricing history, and 7 alternatives. Catalogue date October 2026. Last updated 2026-10-15.
Chroma's free tier offers Open-source AI-native embedding database — Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits… We rate it stable. The one change we have recorded did not narrow the terms. Best for databases workloads — 7 alternatives available.
⚠️ Pricing change: The free tier has changed. The current pricing page shows a Starter plan with $5 in free credits and usage-based pricing for writes, storage, and queries. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of Chroma's page, so it does not count toward the rating.Source ↗ (discovered 2026-09-07 · effective date unknown)View in changelog →
The day we last read the vendor's page. The terms above come from our read of 2026-09-07, and we have read the page since, on 2026-10-15, without confirming them. We hold no confirmation of the terms we publish.
Free Tier Details
Open-source AI-native embedding database — Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits. Write per GiB written $2.50, Storage per GiB per month $0.33, Query per TiB queried $0.0075, Network per GiB returned $0.09. Starter plan includes 10 databases and 10 team members.
We read that on 2026-10-15 from https://www.trychroma.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Chroma as "chroma" and states "$5" and "$2.50" and "$0.33" and "$0.0075".
From trychroma.com/pricing, read 2026-10-15:
$0 + usage 10 databases 10 team members
On Chroma Cloud, reaching a usage limit, whether yours or Chroma's, pauses the service until the limit is changed. (From trychroma.com/pricing, read 2026-10-07.)
When You'll Outgrow Chroma's Free Tier
At 10 databases, you'll need to upgrade.
At that point, the 7 alternatives in Databases are each listed with the free tier they offer, so you can compare what they give you against what you have outgrown.
The free tier has changed. The current pricing page shows a Starter plan with $5 in free credits and usage-based pricing for writes, storage, and queries. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of Chroma's page, so it does not count toward the rating.Source ↗
Before: Open-source AI-native embedding database — self-hosted: fully free with no limits. Chroma Cloud: free tier with 1M embeddings, 1 collection, 10K queries/day. Python and JavaScript SDKs
After: Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits. Write per GiB written $2.50, Storage per GiB per month $0.33, Query per TiB queried $0.0075, Network per GiB returned $0.09. Starter plan includes 10 databases and 10 team members.
How Chroma compares against every one of the 7 we list, not against a selection of them. A surface with room for every member of a tied set may rotate their order. A surface with room for only some of them names none of them, because which ones it named would be the claim, and a claim seeded on the date is not the one we serve tomorrow. How we decide this.
Left out of this list: Koyeb (shares no subtype with this product), Neon (shares no subtype with this product), MongoDB Atlas (shares no subtype with this product), CockroachDB (shares no subtype with this product), Turso (shares no subtype with this product), Firebase (shares no subtype with this product), Databricks (Lakeflow Connect) (none of this category's subtypes apply), Convex (shares no subtype with this product), Appwrite Cloud (shares no subtype with this product), Aiven (shares no subtype with this product), Xata (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare D1 (shares no subtype with this product), Nhost (shares no subtype with this product), PocketBase (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare KV (shares no subtype with this product), Momento (shares no subtype with this product), Nile (shares no subtype with this product), DynamoDB Local (runs only on a developer machine), Redis Cloud (shares no subtype with this product), Prisma Accelerate (extends another product), LanceDB (shares no subtype with this product), Gel (we have not classified this record), CrateDB (shares no subtype with this product), Neo4j AuraDB (shares no subtype with this product), InfluxDB Cloud (shares no subtype with this product), Hasura (extends another product), 8base.com (shares no subtype with this product), codehooks.io (shares no subtype with this product), Couchbase Capella (shares no subtype with this product), filess.io (shares no subtype with this product), restdb.io (shares no subtype with this product), SeaTable (none of this category's subtypes apply), skyvia.com (none of this category's subtypes apply), StackBy (none of this category's subtypes apply), Google Cloud BigQuery (shares no subtype with this product), Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL (shares no subtype with this product), PlanetScale (we have not classified this record). Each is still listed in Databases, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The list above is every one of the 7 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.
Yes, Chroma offers a free tier: Open Source. Open-source AI-native embedding database — Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits. Write per GiB written $2.50, Storage per GiB per month $0.33, Query per TiB queried $0.0075, Network per GiB ret...
What is Chroma's free tier?
Chroma's free tier is called "Open Source". Open-source AI-native embedding database — Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits. Write per GiB written $2.50, Storage per GiB per month $0.33, Query per TiB queried $0.0075, Network per GiB returned $0.09. Starter plan includes 10 databases and 10 team members. On Chroma Cloud, reaching a usage limit, whether yours or Chroma's, pauses the service until the limit is changed. (From https://www.trychroma.com/pricing, read 2026-10-07.)
Is Chroma's free tier reliable?
Chroma's free tier is considered stable. The one change we have recorded did not narrow the terms. See the pricing history below.
Is Chroma's free tier good for production?
Chroma's free tier can be suitable for small production workloads and side projects. We rate it stable and it offers Open-source AI-native embedding database — Starter plan per month + $5 in free credits…, so it's a reasonable starting point. The one change we have recorded did not narrow the terms. Monitor your usage against the limits and have an upgrade plan ready.
What changed in Chroma's pricing?
Chroma has had 1 recorded pricing change. Most recently: The free tier has changed. The current pricing page shows a Starter plan with $5 in free credits and usage-based pricing for writes, storage, and queries. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of Chroma's page, so it does not count toward the rating. Source: https://www.trychroma.com/pricing (discovered 2026-09-07).
What are the best free alternatives to Chroma?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 7 free alternatives to Chroma in Databases, each listed above with its tier. Of those, 6 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 1 is listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
When will I outgrow Chroma's free tier?
At 10 databases, you'll need to upgrade. When you outgrow the free tier, evaluate paid plans against alternatives — sometimes a competitor's free tier covers what you need.
What category is Chroma in?
Chroma is categorized under Databases on AgentDeals. We list 7 other Databases services alongside it, every one of them on this page with its free tier and the stability we publish for it.