# Chroma vs Zilliz Cloud

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Zilliz Cloud

| Attribute | Chroma | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 64.7 (70% (medium)) | 79.5 (74% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 35 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 6,246 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 29,270 | - |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 2,592,643 | - |
| 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":"Zilliz Cloud is a managed cloud service built on the open-source Milvus vector database. It handles storage, indexing, and similarity search at scale for unstructured data, supporting vector search, full-text search, and hybrid retrieval for AI and machine learning workloads. It is indexed under Vector Databases.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"What is Zilliz Cloud?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Zilliz Cloud offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans are also available: Free, Serverless, Dedicated and BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud). Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"Is Zilliz Cloud free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Zilliz Cloud supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"What platforms does Zilliz Cloud support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Not fully, on what we have confirmed. Zilliz Cloud is offered as cloud / SaaS and hybrid, and a hybrid deployment usually means some components can run on your own infrastructure while the rest stays vendor-hosted. We have not confirmed a completely self-hosted option, so check with the vendor if that is a requirement.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"Can Zilliz Cloud be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 19 integrations for Zilliz Cloud, including AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, LangChain, Fivetran, Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console, plus 11 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://zilliz.com/pricing/unlimited-calculator","question":"What does Zilliz Cloud integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR for Zilliz Cloud. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Zilliz Cloud not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://zilliz.com/trust-center","question":"What security certifications does Zilliz Cloud have?","confidence":0.7}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":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. | Zilliz Cloud is a managed cloud service built on the open-source Milvus vector database. It handles storage, indexing, and similarity search at scale for unstructured data, supporting vector search, full-text search, and hybrid retrieval for AI and machine learning workloads. |
| 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":"HNSW, IVF, FLAT (brute-force), SCANN, DiskANN","deployment":"managed","serverless":true,"storage_tier":"tiered","hybrid_search":true,"licence_class":"proprietary","multi_tenancy":true,"product_class":"dedicated_dbms","full_text_bm25":true,"distance_metrics":"cosine, Euclidean","horizontal_scale":"sharded_distributed","metadata_filtering":"post_filter"}` |
| integrations.count | - | 1,000 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"LangChain"},{"name":"Fivetran","native":true,"category":"data_integration"},{"name":"Google Ads","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Google Analytics 4","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Google Search Console","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Google Sheets","native":true,"category":"data_integration"},{"name":"Hubspot","native":true,"category":"crm"},{"name":"LinkedIn Ad Analytics","native":true,"category":"analytics"},{"name":"Marketo","native":true,"category":"marketing"},{"name":"Microsoft Advertising","native":true,"category":"advertising"},{"name":"NetSuite SuiteAnalytics","native":true,"category":"erp"},{"name":"Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications","native":true,"category":"erp"},{"name":"Apache SeaTunnel","native":true,"category":"data_streaming"},{"name":"PostgreSQL/Pgvector","native":false,"category":"database"},{"name":"PyMilvus","native":true,"category":"sdk"},{"name":"Claude","native":false,"category":"ai_assistant","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Prometheus","native":true,"category":"monitoring","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"HoneyHive","native":true,"category":"observability","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Cohere","native":true,"category":"embeddings","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Haystack","native":true,"category":"framework","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"FiftyOne","native":true,"category":"computer_vision","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"DSPy","native":true,"category":"llm","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Voyage AI","native":true,"category":"embeddings","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Jina AI","native":true,"category":"embeddings","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"n8n","native":true,"category":"automation","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"DocsGPT","native":true,"category":"documentation","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"vLLM","native":true,"category":"llm","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Langflow","native":true,"category":"framework","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Vanna","native":true,"category":"sql","direction":"bidirectional"}]` |
| language.primary | Rust | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"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"]}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"$0/month, 5 GB storage, 5 collections","features":["Community support via Slack","Vector search","Filtered search","Range search"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Community tier with limited resources for non-production use","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"storage":"5 GB/month","collections":"5"}},{"free":false,"name":"Serverless","summary":"Pay-per-query pricing, system-managed auto-scaling","features":["Fully managed vector databases","Backup and restore","Basic monitoring","Built-in encryption for data in transit and at rest","Vector search","Hybrid search","Full text search"],"description":"Usage-based pricing for variable workloads with automatic scaling","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Dedicated","summary":"From $197/month base, plus $0.126/GB storage, dedicated infrastructure","features":["99.95% uptime SLA","SSO (SAML 2.0)","Granular RBAC","Multi-replica and elastic scaling","Global cluster with disaster recovery","Advanced security: CMEK and full-path in-transit encryption","HIPAA-eligible","Audit logs","Cross-region backup","Continuous data protection","All search types","MFA","API key management","Fine-grained metrics with real-time monitoring"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":197,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.126,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Reserved, isolated environments for production workloads with guaranteed performance","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"BYOC","description":"Bring Your Own Cloud deployment with custom infrastructure and compliance requirements","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free tier with 5 GB storage. Serverless pricing from $0/month pay-per-query. Dedicated clusters from $197/month. Annual commitments available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://zilliz.com/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-09-18T12:32:51.755Z","freeTrialDays":30,"startingPrice":{"amount":197,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | low | high |
| pricing.starting_price | - | `{"amount":197,"currency":"USD"}` |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 4 | - |
| 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"}]` | - |
| reliability.sla_pct | - | 99.95 |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.certifications | - | `[{"name":"SOC 2 Type II","level":"Type II","status":"active"},{"name":"ISO/IEC 27001","status":"active"}]` |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.iso27001 | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 5.1 | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | yes |
| security.trust_center | - | https://zilliz.com/trust-center |
| 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"}` | - |

## Capabilities (Vector Databases)

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

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-09-21T03:46:38.345Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*