Chroma vs ObjectBox
Chroma
trychroma.com
ObjectBox
objectbox.ioSide by side
| Figure | Chroma | ObjectBox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $250/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 2 |
| Spec score · Embedded Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 7.9 (#14) |
| Security | Chroma Cloud says customer data is encrypted in transit and at rest and that access controls include SSO, role-based access control, and employee MFA. | ObjectBox Sync Server supports JWT authentication and can use TLS by supplying a certificate; its documentation describes no-authentication mode as insecure. |
| Support | The pricing page lists Community Slack for Starter, Slack support for Team, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | The FAQ directs questions to documentation and Stack Overflow, and says professional support is offered to paying customers. |
| Vector search | The product supports semantic similarity search over dense vector embeddings. | The FAQ says ObjectBox supports vector search and that there are no limits on embedding-column dimensions. |
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.
ObjectBox
ObjectBox is an embedded, object-oriented NoSQL database for mobile applications and IoT devices. Its database provides native object APIs, relationships, reactive observers, ACID transactions and automatic schema migration. ObjectBox Sync can move data between devices and a backend or server, including for offline-first use cases. Listed language APIs include Java, Kotlin, Swift, Flutter/Dart, Go, Python and C/C++. The product supports vector search, with no embedding-column dimension limit stated in its FAQ. ObjectBox says it supports direct synchronization to MongoDB; connectors for other backend databases may require custom development. Its Sync Server can be self-hosted on POSIX systems and cloud providers, though ObjectBox does not currently provide cloud hosting. The core database plan is free; Sync pricing is quoted per project based on needs. The company describes its focus as mobile and IoT development, particularly decentralized systems with restricted devices and offline scenarios. Mesh Sync is available for Android Java/Kotlin and Flutter/Dart starting with version 6.0.0-beta, with APIs that may change before final release.