# Chroma vs Deep Lake

| Attribute | Chroma | Deep Lake |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 62.6 (75% (high)) | 59.5 (38% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 41 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 6,246 | 1,384 |
| adoption.github_stars | 29,495 | 9,251 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 1,906,768 | 22,561 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"A search system enabling simultaneous vector similarity, full-text, and structured metadata queries across large datasets. Deployable as open-source self-hosted infrastructure or managed cloud service with usage-based pricing, supporting multi-tenant workloads and distributed scaling. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","question":"What is Chroma?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Chroma is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. A commercial or hosted edition starts at $0.01. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","question":"Is Chroma free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Chroma supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","question":"What platforms does Chroma support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Chroma can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","question":"Can Chroma be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2 and GDPR for Chroma. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Chroma not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.trychroma.com","question":"What security certifications does Chroma have?","confidence":0.48},{"answer":"Yes. Chroma is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma","question":"Is Chroma open source?","confidence":0.99},{"answer":"Chroma is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States. The vendor is headquartered in the United States.","source":"https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","question":"Where is Chroma available?","confidence":0.75}]` | `[{"answer":"Deep Lake is a data engine optimized for AI that combines vector and tensor storage with GPU acceleration, offering versioned data, full-text search, and serverless query capabilities for machine learning and AI agent applications. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://www.activeloop.ai","question":"What is Deep Lake?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Deep Lake is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. A commercial or hosted edition starts at $99 per user per month. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.activeloop.ai","question":"Is Deep Lake free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Deep Lake. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.activeloop.ai","question":"What platforms does Deep Lake support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Deep Lake, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://www.activeloop.ai","question":"Can Deep Lake be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for Deep Lake. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Deep Lake not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.activeloop.ai/privacy/","question":"What security certifications does Deep Lake have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. Deep Lake is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake","question":"Is Deep Lake open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A vector search system offering serverless infrastructure with vector, hybrid, and full-text search capabilities that handles embeddings and indexing automatically. | A platform for storing and indexing diverse data types to enable searching and retrieval in AI-driven applications, with comprehensive data type support and indexing capabilities. |
| features.capabilities | `{"ann_index":"HNSW","deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":true,"quantization":"binary","storage_tier":"tiered","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"permissive_oss","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","metadata_filtering":"pre_filter"}` | `{"deployment":"managed","serverless":true,"storage_tier":"tiered","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"source_available","product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true}` |
| integrations.count | 2 | 3 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Gemini"},{"name":"Superlinked"}]` | `[{"name":"LangChain","native":true},{"name":"LlamaIndex","native":true},{"name":"Weights & Biases","native":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL"}]` |
| language.primary | Rust | C++ |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Starter","summary":"Free tier plus metered charges for write, storage, query, and network","features":["10 databases","10 team members","Community Slack"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":2.5,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.33,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.0075,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.09,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Get up and running quickly with free credits then usage-based pricing","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"databases":"10","free_credits":"$5","team_members":"10"}},{"free":false,"name":"Team","summary":"$250/month with $100 included credits, plus overage metering","features":["100 databases","30 team members","Slack support","SOC II compliance","Volume-based discounts"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":250,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":2.5,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.33,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.0075,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.09,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Scale production workloads with included credits and priority support","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"databases":"100","team_members":"30","monthly_credits":"$100"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Custom pricing negotiated per deployment","features":["Unlimited databases","Unlimited team members","Dedicated support","Single tenant clusters","BYOC clusters","SLAs"],"description":"Security, scale, and dedicated support for organizations with custom requirements","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Freemium model with usage-based metering. Starter plan free with $5 credits; Team plan $250/month plus metered charges with $100 included credits; Enterprise with custom pricing.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.trychroma.com/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T11:06:40.719Z","startingPrice":{"amount":0.0075,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Basic","summary":"Free $15 credit, then $0.15/compute-unit/hr + $23/TB/mo storage","features":["Pay as you go compute","Daily backups with 1-day retention","SSO (Google/Microsoft)","MFA","1 business day support"],"components":[{"kind":"one_time","amount":15,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"compute-unit-hour"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.15,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TB/month"},"kind":"metered","amount":23,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Testing & starter projects with pay-as-you-go pricing","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"storage":"500 GB","compute_credit":"$15"}},{"free":false,"name":"Team","summary":"$99/seat/month, 7-day free trial","features":["1M traces/month per seat","10M queries/month per seat","Daily backups with 1-day retention","SSO (Google/Microsoft)","MFA","1 business day support","7-day free trial"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"seat","amount":99,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Per-seat collaboration for teams","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"storage":"500 GB","traces_per_month_per_seat":"1M","queries_per_month_per_seat":"10M"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Custom pricing","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"Data Transfer (Egress)","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.09,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"From $99/seat/month (Team) or pay-as-you-go Basic with $15 credit. 7-day free trial available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.activeloop.ai","retrievedAt":"2026-08-05T13:08:11.282Z","freeTrialDays":7,"startingPrice":{"amount":99,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 4 | 11 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/latest","date":"2025-04-01T23:29:39Z","type":"prerelease","version":"latest"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.9","date":"2026-05-05T05:55:40Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.4.4","date":"2026-05-05T04:47:11Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.4.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/foundation-cli-v0.1.0-alpha.3","date":"2026-05-01T00:44:16Z","type":"prerelease","version":"foundation-cli-v0.1.0-alpha.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.8","date":"2026-04-16T23:35:52Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.7","date":"2026-04-08T07:49:29Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.4.3","date":"2026-04-08T04:25:36Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.6","date":"2026-04-07T03:01:03Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.4.2","date":"2026-04-04T15:46:18Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.5","date":"2026-03-10T09:30:59Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.3","date":"2026-03-07T19:07:43Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.2","date":"2026-02-27T19:50:12Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.1","date":"2026-02-19T20:01:23Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.4.1","date":"2026-02-19T19:30:48Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.5.0","date":"2026-02-09T08:47:05Z","type":"stable","version":"1.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.4.0","date":"2026-02-09T05:36:21Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.4.1","date":"2026-01-14T19:19:18Z","type":"stable","version":"1.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.3.1","date":"2026-01-13T21:17:59Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/1.4.0","date":"2025-12-24T02:59:03Z","type":"stable","version":"1.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/releases/tag/cli-1.3.0","date":"2025-12-24T01:22:45Z","type":"stable","version":"cli-1.3.0"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.5.2","date":"2026-02-11T02:06:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.5.1","date":"2026-02-07T05:15:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.5.0","date":"2026-01-22T17:07:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.4.5","date":"2026-01-13T18:47:57Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.4.4","date":"2025-12-14T07:20:07Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.4.3","date":"2025-12-03T02:02:54Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.4.1","date":"2025-11-21T10:52:52Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.3.3","date":"2025-09-29T07:14:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v3.9.52","date":"2025-09-05T13:50:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.52"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.4.0","date":"2025-10-24T19:03:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.3.5","date":"2025-10-10T17:50:47Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.3.4","date":"2025-10-10T15:16:47Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.3.0","date":"2025-08-29T08:50:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v3.9.51","date":"2025-08-07T07:23:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.51"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v3.9.50","date":"2025-08-01T11:57:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.50"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v3.9.46","date":"2025-07-09T14:33:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.46"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.2.14","date":"2025-07-08T23:03:45Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.2.12","date":"2025-07-02T11:03:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v4.2.8","date":"2025-06-10T14:39:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/activeloopai/deeplake/releases/tag/v3.9.45","date":"2025-06-10T10:56:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.45"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.scorecard | 5.1 | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":4,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=chromadb&per_page=100","last_12m":4,"max_severity":"CRITICAL"}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=deeplake&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

| Capability | Chroma | Deep Lake |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Managed |
| Serverless / consumption pricing | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Index** |  |  |
| ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat) | HNSW | - |
| Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean) | - | - |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Metadata filtering | Pre-filter | - |
| Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in BM25 / lexical | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Storage** |  |  |
| Quantization | Binary | - |
| On-disk vs in-memory | Tiered | Tiered |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants) | ✓ | - |
| Horizontal scale | Sharded / distributed | - |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | - | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Permissive OSS | Source-available |
| **Classification** |  |  |
| Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent | Dedicated DBMS | Dedicated DBMS |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:56:03.129Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*