Chroma vs Vald
Chroma
trychroma.com
Vald
vald.vdaas.orgSide by side
| Figure | Chroma | Vald |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $250/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 7.3 (#30) |
| Spec score · Vector Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 7.4 (#21) |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 9.3 (#2) | 7.2 (#28) |
| Deployment | The maker says Chroma can run locally with pip, npm, or Docker, on Chroma Cloud, or in a customer’s own VPC. | The maker documents deployment on Kubernetes with Helm or its Helm operator, and also provides a tutorial for running a Vald agent on Docker. |
| Support | The pricing page lists Community Slack for Starter, Slack support for Team, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | The project recommends its community Slack for questions and also accepts email at [email protected]. |
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.