Chroma vs Elasticsearch
Chroma
trychroma.com
Elasticsearch
elastic.coSide by side
| Figure | Chroma | Elasticsearch |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $250/mo | $99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 8 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 8.4 (#7) |
| Spec score · Vector Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 8.5 (#4) |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 9.3 (#2) | 8.3 (#10) |
| Deployment | The maker says Chroma can run locally with pip, npm, or Docker, on Chroma Cloud, or in a customer’s own VPC. | It can run on premises, in the cloud, across clouds, or as a managed serverless service. |
| Purpose | Chroma is open-source data infrastructure for AI that stores embeddings and metadata and supports search and retrieval across text, images, and other modalities. | Elasticsearch is an open source distributed search and analytics engine for speed, scale, and AI applications. |
| Search | Chroma supports dense, sparse, and hybrid vector search, full-text and regex search, and metadata filtering. | It supports full-text, semantic, and hybrid search with filters, ranking, and reranking. |
| Support | The pricing page lists Community Slack for Starter, Slack support for Team, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | Elastic Cloud Hosted and Serverless offer four support tiers depending on subscription tier. |
Plans
Elasticsearch
- BasicPriced on request
- Standard$99 a month
- Gold$114 a month
- Platinum$131 a month
- Enterprise$184 a month
- Elastic Cloud HostedPrice not published
- Elastic Cloud ServerlessPrice not published
- Self-managed ElasticsearchPriced on request
In their own words
Chroma
Chroma is open-source infrastructure for storing embeddings and metadata, then searching and retrieving information across text, images, and other modalities. Search options include dense, sparse, and hybrid vector search, plus full-text and regex search and metadata filtering. It can run locally through pip, npm, or Docker, on Chroma Cloud, or in a customer’s own VPC. The maker says its Apache 2.0-licensed codebase powers both the open-source database and Chroma Cloud. Documented integrations include embedding providers such as OpenAI, Cohere, Google Gemini, Hugging Face, Jina AI, and Ollama, and frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, Haystack, Streamlit, and DeepEval. Cloud security features include encryption in transit and at rest, SSO, role-based access control, and employee MFA; Chroma Cloud has completed a SOC 2 Type II examination. Starter is free, with 10 databases and 10 team members. Team is $250 a month plus usage and includes $100 credits, 100 databases, and 30 team members.
Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.