# Chroma vs Vald

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Chroma

| Attribute | Chroma | Vald |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 67.6 (70% (medium)) | 48.4 (36% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 81 | 18 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 6,246 | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | 29,148 | 1,718 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 2,592,643 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | Vald is a cloud-native vector search platform running on Kubernetes that uses NGT for efficient nearest-neighbor search. It provides automatic indexing and backups, index replication across distributed agents, and horizontal scaling to handle billions of vectors. |
| features.capabilities | `{"deployment":"self_hosted","serverless":true,"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"}` | `{"ann_index":"NGT","deployment":"self_hosted","storage_tier":"disk_backed","product_class":"dedicated_dbms","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed"}` |
| language.primary | Rust | Go |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":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"]}` | - |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | - |
| pricing.model | commercial | - |
| pricing.price_level | low | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | 4 | 51 |
| 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/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.8.0","date":"2026-08-26T06:00:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.17","date":"2025-07-04T09:40:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.16","date":"2024-12-24T06:46:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.15","date":"2024-12-05T04:29:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.15"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.14","date":"2024-10-11T20:54:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.13","date":"2024-08-06T14:18:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.12","date":"2024-02-21T10:31:10Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.11","date":"2024-02-15T07:32:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.10","date":"2023-12-20T04:59:57Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.9","date":"2023-12-06T06:16:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.8","date":"2023-09-15T05:22:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.7","date":"2023-09-14T07:44:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.6","date":"2023-06-15T06:18:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.5","date":"2023-04-25T02:42:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.4","date":"2023-03-29T08:50:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.3","date":"2023-03-13T03:50:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.2","date":"2023-03-03T06:49:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.1","date":"2023-02-09T05:42:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.7.0","date":"2023-01-24T04:14:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/vdaas/vald/releases/tag/v1.6.3","date":"2022-10-19T07:07:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.6.3"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | 5.1 | 6.6 |
| 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=go&package_name=github.com%2Fvdaas%2Fvald&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

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

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T16:57:40.477Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*