Chroma vs LMDB
Chroma
trychroma.comLMDB
symas.comSide by side
| Figure | Chroma | LMDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $250/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 2 |
| Spec score · Embedded Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 7.5 (#22) |
| 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. | LMDB is an ultra-fast, ultra-compact, crash-proof key-value embedded data store developed for the OpenLDAP Project. |
| Support | The pricing page lists Community Slack for Starter, Slack support for Team, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | Symas offers fixed-price Gold or Enterprise source-level support and porting or professional services for LMDB users. |
Plans
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.