How much does Chroma cost?

Chroma publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Starter up to On request for Enterprise. The entry tier costs nothing.

What is the difference between Starter and Team on Chroma?

Team costs $250/month against Free, and adds 100 databases, 30 team members, $100 in included credits, slack support.

Is the Enterprise plan on Chroma worth it?

That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is unlimited databases, unlimited team members, dedicated support, single tenant clusters. It costs On request against $250/month for Team. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.

Which databases tools can I use without paying?

5 of the 8 databases tools listed alongside Chroma have a free tier: Presto, Dremio, Solace PubSub+, StarRocks, EMQX.

Does Chroma charge per user?

The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.

Are these Chroma prices current?

They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.

What should I compare Chroma against before paying?

The closest databases tools in this directory are Canary Labs, Presto, Privacera, Dremio. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Chroma covering price, platforms and features.

Databases · pricing

Chroma pricing

Chroma publishes 3 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.

As of 30 August 2026, Chroma pricing is free across 3 published tiers. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.

Entry price: Free
Model: Usage-based
Tiers: 3
Free tier: Yes

Chroma plans, side by side

Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.

Chroma pricing tiers
Plan	Price	Features listed	Step up from the tier below
Starter	Free	4	Entry tier
Team	$250/month	6	+$250/month, 6 more features
Enterprise	On request	5	Priced on request

What each tier adds

The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.

Starter

Free

The entry tier. It covers 10 databases, 10 team members, community slack access, free credits included.

Team

$250/month

Over Starter, this tier adds:

100 databases
30 team members
$100 in included credits
Slack support
SOC II compliance
Volume discounts

Enterprise

On request

Over Team, this tier adds:

Unlimited databases
Unlimited team members
Dedicated support
Single tenant clusters
Custom SLAs

Where Chroma stops being free

Starter, Free

10 databases
10 team members
Community Slack access
Free credits included

Team, $250/month

The first thing you pay for:

100 databases
30 team members
$100 in included credits
Slack support
SOC II compliance
Volume discounts

What the product covers

The full Chroma feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.

Other

Embedded mode
Single-node server
Distributed architecture
Vector search
Full-text search
Metadata filtering
Consistent API across modes
Multi-language clients
Embedding function integrations
Apache 2.0 licence

People bring Chroma in for prototyping retrieval-augmented generation where the priority is having a working index in minutes rather than choosing a permanent store, agent memory in a single application process, where an embedded store avoids adding a network dependency, a departmental search application under roughly ten million records where one server is sufficient and simplicity is worth more than headroom, local and ci testing of retrieval code with the same client library used in production. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Chroma are worth a look before you commit to a tier.

How that compares in Databases

Too few databases tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.

Chroma entry price against other Databases tools
Tool	Entry price	Model	Rated	Head to head
Chroma (this page)	Free	usage-based	-
Canary Labs	$3000/year	Per tag band per year	-	vs Chroma
Presto	Free	Open source, no licence fee	-	vs Chroma
Privacera	On request	quote	-	vs Chroma
Dremio	Free, then $0.2/hour	Per Dremio Compute Unit consumed	-	vs Chroma
Solace PubSub+	Free	quote	-	vs Chroma
StarRocks	Free	Open source, no licence fee	-	vs Chroma

Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Chroma badges page.

Before you pay for Chroma

Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.

What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 3 tiers between Free and On request, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.

Chroma runs on not recorded. The full record is on the Chroma review, and the rest of the category is under best databases tools.

Chroma pricing on the vendor's own site

Chroma pricing questions

How much does Chroma cost?: Chroma publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Starter up to On request for Enterprise. The entry tier costs nothing.
Does Chroma have a free plan?: Yes. The Starter tier costs nothing and covers 10 databases, 10 team members, community slack access. Paying starts at $250/month for Team.
What is the difference between Starter and Team on Chroma?: Team costs $250/month against Free, and adds 100 databases, 30 team members, $100 in included credits, slack support.
Is the Enterprise plan on Chroma worth it?: That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is unlimited databases, unlimited team members, dedicated support, single tenant clusters. It costs On request against $250/month for Team. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.
Which databases tools can I use without paying?: 5 of the 8 databases tools listed alongside Chroma have a free tier: Presto, Dremio, Solace PubSub+, StarRocks, EMQX.
What am I actually paying for with Chroma?: The record lists 10 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for prototyping retrieval-augmented generation where the priority is having a working index in minutes rather than choosing a permanent store, agent memory in a single application process, where an embedded store avoids adding a network dependency, a departmental search application under roughly ten million records where one server is sufficient and simplicity is worth more than headroom.
Does Chroma charge per user?: The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
Are these Chroma prices current?: They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
What should I compare Chroma against before paying?: The closest databases tools in this directory are Canary Labs, Presto, Privacera, Dremio. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Chroma covering price, platforms and features.