Chroma

Chroma is an open-source vector database with 28k+ GitHub stars — a Pinecone alternative rebuilt in Rust for high-performance AI search and retrieval. Serverless cloud with hybrid and full-text search capabilities.

Key features

Vector search

• High-performance similarity search with HNSW indexing
• Hybrid search combining vectors, keywords, and metadata
• Full-text search with BM25 ranking
• Metadata filtering with rich query language
• Multi-tenancy support out of the box

Database capabilities

• Rust-based engine for memory efficiency and speed
• Serverless cloud with automatic scaling
• ACID transactions and data durability
• Distributed architecture for high availability
• Multi-vector support per document

Developer experience

• Simple Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Rust SDKs
• Seamless integration with LangChain, LlamaIndex, and OpenAI
• Automatic embedding generation with built-in models
• REST API for language-agnostic access

At a glance

License	Apache-2.0
Stack	Rust, Python, JavaScript
Self-hosted	Yes — Chroma OSS
Cloud	Chroma Cloud (serverless)
API	Python, JS/TS, Rust, REST

Self-hosting

pip install chromadb

Chroma can be embedded directly in your application or run as a standalone server. The cloud version provides fully managed infrastructure with automatic scaling.