Chroma vs SingleStore Helios
Chroma
trychroma.comSingleStore Helios
singlestore.comSide by side
| Figure | Chroma | SingleStore Helios |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $250/mo | $0.99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Spec score · Database Software | 8.7 (#20) | 9.3 (#3) |
| Company legal name | The terms identify the service provider as Chroma Inc. | The company is identified as SingleStore, Inc. |
| Compliance | Chroma Cloud says it completed a SOC 2 Type II examination. | SingleStore states that it holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications and maintains a privacy-compliance framework. |
| Documentation depth | The docs cover quickstarts, SDK references, cloud clients, deployment, Docker, production client-server mode, performance and migrations. | The cloud documentation includes getting-started, connection, database, loading, querying, AI, security, reference, release-notes and support sections. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Rating on G2 | 4.2 out of 5 from 6 reviews. | 4.5 out of 5 from 118 reviews. |
| 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. | SingleStore describes security across application security, cloud security, corporate IT security, and governance, risk, and compliance. |
| Self-hosting | A Chroma server can run locally or in Docker and can be deployed on AWS, GCP, Azure and other cloud providers. | SingleStore can be deployed as a self-managed production environment or as a local Docker Dev Image. |
| Support | The pricing page lists Community Slack for Starter, Slack support for Team, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | Paid Helios subscriptions include Standard support, with Silver and Platinum tiers offering faster response targets and expanded coverage. |
| What it does | ChromaDB is open-source search infrastructure for AI applications, combining vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. | SingleStore Helios is a managed distributed SQL database combining transactional, analytical, JSON, full-text, vector, time-series and geospatial workloads. |
Plans
SingleStore Helios
- SharedFree
- Standard$0.99 a month
- Enterprise$1.49 a month
- StandardPriced on request
- EnterprisePriced on request
- BYOC StandardPriced 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.
SingleStore Helios
SingleStore Helios is a cloud database service available on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. It handles transactional and analytical workloads in one database, with storage and compute scaled independently. Its data capabilities include relational records, JSON/BSON documents, vector and full-text search, time-series, geospatial, and key-value data. SingleStore Pipelines can ingest from sources such as Kafka, Amazon S3, and HDFS. For AI workloads, the service includes Jupyter notebooks, data integration services, and a compute service. Listed integrations include Datadog, Terraform, Apache Spark, AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory, dbt, and Fivetran. Helios is available through web and API platforms. The free Shared plan provides one workspace for evaluation, development, and non-production testing, with self-support. Standard is $0.99 a month for managed production workloads, with read replicas, database branching, 30-day monitoring, and support. Enterprise is $1.49 a month and adds online point-in-time recovery, Smart Disaster Recovery, audit logging, and customer-managed encryption keys. The listed availability commitments vary by configuration, reaching 99.99% across two availability zones on paid plans.