Chroma vs HSQLDB
Chroma
trychroma.com
HSQLDB
hsqldb.orgSide by side
| Figure | Chroma | HSQLDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $250/mo | $8.33/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 11 |
| Spec score · Embedded Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 9.2 (#2) |
| Spec score · Database Software | 8.7 (#20) | 8.9 (#13) |
| Documentation depth | The docs cover quickstarts, SDK references, cloud clients, deployment, Docker, production client-server mode, performance and migrations. | The project publishes HTML, PDF and text guides, JavaDoc for public classes, utilities documentation, examples, tests and SQL scripts. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Rating on G2 | 4.2 out of 5 from 6 reviews. | 4.0 out of 5 from 22 reviews. |
| Security controls | The security page states that customer data is encrypted in transit and at rest, employee production access requires MFA, and AWS GuardDuty and Inspector are used for threat detection. | Security features include passwords, users, roles, GRANT/REVOKE privileges and fine-grained row-level access control. |
| Support | The pricing page lists Community Slack for Starter, Slack support for Team, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | Support options include a help forum, a user mailing list, bug and feature request trackers, paid SupportWare, and professional commercial support. |
| What it does | ChromaDB is open-source search infrastructure for AI applications, combining vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. | HSQLDB (HyperSQL) is a Java relational database engine supporting transactional in-memory and disk tables in embedded or server deployments. |
Plans
HSQLDB
- Developer subscription$100 a year
- Basic Corporate subscriptionPrice not published
- Premier Corporate subscription$2,500 a year
- HSQLDBFree
- HSQLDB softwareFree
- Developer SupportWare$100 a year
- SupportWare Developer subscription$100 a year
- Basic Corporate SupportWare$500 a year
- SupportWare Basic Corporate subscription$500 a year
- Premier Corporate SupportWare$2,500 a year
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.
HSQLDB
HSQLDB is a Java-based relational database engine for embedded or server use, with both in-memory and disk-based tables. It supports SQL:2023 core features and many optional features, plus lock-based and MVCC transaction models; the engine is fully multithreaded. Listed capabilities include JSON constructor functions, CSV loading and unloading, temporal system-versioned tables, row-level access control, and log-based replica synchronization. It includes a command-line SQL tool and simple GUI query tools. The latest official release listed is version 2.7.4, compatible with JDK 8 and above, and packages include Java 11 module jars as well as Java 8 jars for HSQLDB and SQL Tool. HSQLDB is self-hosted, with high availability, read replicas, and JSON data support listed. Its default combined limit for CACHED tables is 8TB, extendable to 256TB with a connection property; each TEXT table is limited to 256GB, and memory tables depend on available memory. The software is free to use in commercial products when license terms are met; its licenses are based on the new BSD License. The HSQLDB plan is free. A Developer subscription is $100 a year; Premier Corporate is $2,500 a year at the base level. Support options include community channels and paid commercial support.