Comparison

Chroma vs Upstash

On the evidence we track, Upstash leads this comparison with a composite score of 73/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Chroma63
★Upstash73
Score
vioscaleAI score
Chroma63 / 100high · 75%
Upstash73 / 100medium · 72%
Pricing
Free tier
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Model
Chromafreemium
Upstashfreemium
Price level
Chromalow
Upstashlow
Starting price
Chroma–
Upstash$5
Transparent
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Integrations
Count
Chroma2
Upstash6
Security
Disclosure policy
Chroma–
Upstash✓
Gdpr
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Hipaa
Chroma–
Upstash✓
Scorecard
Chroma5.1
Upstash–
Soc2
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Reliability
Sla pct
Chroma–
Upstash99.99
Status page
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Chroma6,246
Upstash–
Github stars
Chroma29,495
Upstash–
Package downloads weekly
Chroma1,906,768
Upstash–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Chroma41
Upstash–
Release
Cadence days
Chroma4
Upstash–
History
Chroma20 items
Upstash–
License
Spdx
Upstash–
Language
Primary
ChromaRust
Upstash–
Content
Faq
Chroma7 items
Upstash7 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for vector databases. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Deployment
Deployment
ChromaSelf-hosted
UpstashManaged
Serverless / consumption pricing
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Index
ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat)
ChromaHNSW
UpstashHNSW
Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean)
Chroma-
Upstashcosine
Query
Metadata filtering
ChromaPre-filter
UpstashPre-filter
Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion)
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Built-in BM25 / lexical
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Storage
Quantization
ChromaBinary
Upstash-
On-disk vs in-memory
ChromaTiered
Upstashpersistent
Scale
Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants)
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Horizontal scale
ChromaSharded / distributed
UpstashSharded / distributed
Consistency
Consistency
Chroma-
UpstashStrong
Licensing
Licence class
ChromaPermissive OSS
UpstashProprietary
Classification
Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent
ChromaDedicated DBMS
UpstashDedicated DBMS

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Chroma

A vector search system offering serverless infrastructure with vector, hybrid, and full-text search capabilities that handles embeddings and indexing automatically.

Independently observed

Upstash

Leader

A cloud platform offering serverless Redis, vector databases, message queues, and workflow orchestration designed for developers building serverless applications, with usage-based and fixed-rate pricing options.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Chroma

from $0.01/moHybridFree tier

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.

  • StarterFree
    • 10 databases
    • 10 team members
    • Community Slack
  • Team$250/month with $100 included credits, plus overage metering
    • 100 databases
    • 30 team members
    • Slack support
    • SOC II compliance
    • Volume-based discounts
  • EnterpriseContact sales
    • Unlimited databases
    • Unlimited team members
    • Dedicated support
    • Single tenant clusters
    • BYOC clusters
    • +1 more
as of verify ↗

Upstash

Leader
from $5/moHybridFree tier

Free tier (30 MB), Essentials from $5/month, Pro from $200/month

  • FreeFree
    • No replication
    • Single database
    • Limited throughput
  • Essentials$5/month (250 MB) to $216/month (12 GB)
    • Predefined database sizes (250 MB to 12 GB)
    • Bandwidth and throughput limits per tier
    • Optional high availability
    • Flex tier with reduced throughput
  • Pro$200/month minimum + $0.014/hour usage-based billing
    • Unlimited memory
    • Dedicated VPC infrastructure
    • Multiple databases per subscription
    • Active-Active multi-region writes
    • Auto-tiering
    • +1 more
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
CLI
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Chroma✓
Upstash✓
Self-hosted
Chroma✓
Upstash✗

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

Chroma

2 total
  • Gemini
  • Superlinked
Independently observed

Upstash

Leader
13 total
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Auth0
  • MongoDB
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • Debezium
  • JDBC
  • FluentBit
  • Drizzle
  • Vercel AI SDK
  • Redis protocol clients
  • Vercel
  • Aiven
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Chroma or Upstash: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.