Chroma vs Zilliz Cloud

Chroma9.4Visit Zilliz Cloud8.9Visit

Higher score Chroma #1 in Vector Database Hosting 9.4/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 2 of 3 features Visit Chroma

vs

Zilliz Cloud #5 in Vector Database Hosting 8.9/10 Free plan · 30-day trial Free planFree trial✓ 2 of 3 features Visit Zilliz Cloud

• Chroma fits best

  Open-source hybrid retrieval teams

• Zilliz Cloud fits best

  Managed Milvus-compatible deployments

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Side by side

Feature	Chroma 9.4/10 Visit ↗	Zilliz Cloud 8.9/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.4	8.9
Ranking	#1 in Vector Database Hosting	#5 in Vector Database Hosting
Best for	Open-source hybrid retrieval teams	Managed Milvus-compatible deployments
Pricing model	Free plan + paid	Free plan + paid
Starting price	$250/mo	—
Free plan	✓	✓
Free trial	—	30 days
Deployment	Cloud, Self-hosted	Cloud
Platforms	Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android	Web
Support	Email, Community, Docs	Docs
Compliance	SOC 2	SSO/SAML, 2FA, GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001
Integrations	18 integrations	10 integrations
Built for	Solo, Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Chroma 2/3 · Zilliz Cloud 2/3
Hybrid search	✓	✓
Metadata filtering	✓	✓
Serverless scaling	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Included storage	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Deployment regions	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Maximum dimensions	4096 dimensions	32768 dimensions (best)
Our review
Pros	Combines dense, sparse, hybrid, full-text, regex, and metadata search Supports self-hosting, Chroma Cloud, and local persistent storage Integrates with OpenAI, Cohere, Hugging Face, and other AI tools	Hybrid, sparse, BM25, and full-text search in one service Free tier includes 5 GB storage and up to 5 collections SaaS and BYOC deployment options with backup and migration tools
Cons	Chroma Cloud combines plan fees with usage-based charges Enterprise pricing is custom rather than publicly listed Broader search features may exceed the needs of simple vector workloads	Paid pricing uses variable operation or compute charges Deployment is cloud-focused rather than self-hosted Not open source, which limits platform ownership options
Our verdict	Chroma is an open-source database and search infrastructure for AI applications. It stores documents, embeddings, and metadata, with support for dense similarity search, sparse search using BM25 or SPLADE, hybrid ranking, full-text search,… Read the review →	Zilliz Cloud is a fully managed Milvus service for teams building and operating vector search applications. It provides cloud-hosted clusters for semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation, recommendations, and multimodal retrieval.… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Chroma — where it wins

  • Combines dense, sparse, hybrid, full-text, regex, and metadata search
  • Supports self-hosting, Chroma Cloud, and local persistent storage
  • Integrates with OpenAI, Cohere, Hugging Face, and other AI tools

  Where it doesn't

  • Chroma Cloud combines plan fees with usage-based charges
  • Enterprise pricing is custom rather than publicly listed
  • Broader search features may exceed the needs of simple vector workloads

• Zilliz Cloud — where it wins

  • Hybrid, sparse, BM25, and full-text search in one service
  • Free tier includes 5 GB storage and up to 5 collections
  • SaaS and BYOC deployment options with backup and migration tools

  Where it doesn't

  • Paid pricing uses variable operation or compute charges
  • Deployment is cloud-focused rather than self-hosted
  • Not open source, which limits platform ownership options

• Chroma9.4/10 · Free plan

  A flexible vector database for hybrid retrieval, multimodal search, and self-hosted AI applications.

  Visit ChromaFull verdict →
• Zilliz Cloud8.9/10 · Free plan · 30-day trial

  A capable managed Milvus service with a free tier and usage-based paid plans.

  Visit Zilliz CloudFull verdict →