Chroma Pricing: Plans & Cost Calculator 2026
A free tier is available for Python RAG prototypes, with paid plans scaling up to $250/mo for teams.
Chroma plans and pricing
Starter
Getting started quickly
Team
Scale production use cases
Enterprise
Security, scale, support
Chroma pricing: the quick answer
Chroma Cloud starts free with a Starter plan that includes a small monthly credit, 10 databases and 10 team members. The Team plan is $250 a month with usage credit included, SOC 2 and volume discounts; Enterprise is a custom quote. Above the credit, everything is metered: writes at $2.50 per GB, storage at $0.33 per GB a month, queries and egress billed by volume. Credits do not roll over, so $250 is a floor. The open-source build stays free to self-host.
- StarterFree
- Team$250/mo
- EnterpriseCustom
At $250/mo to start, Chroma sits 285% above the $65/mo median across 7 vector databases tools we track.
Chroma cost calculator
Chroma Hidden Costs & Pitfalls
The plan fee is only the base. Chroma meters writes, storage, queries and egress on top, and the monthly credits vanish if you do not use them, so a quiet month still costs the full sticker.
Chroma pricing, read against its live plans and category
Positioning
Chroma Cloud runs on a credit wallet. Starter is free with $5 in monthly credits, 10 databases and 10 team members. Team is $250/mo and bundles $100 of usage credit plus SOC 2 and volume discounts. Enterprise is custom for single-tenant or BYOC clusters. Above the credit, usage is metered: $2.50/GiB written, $0.33/GiB stored per month, $0.0075/TiB queried, and $0.09/GiB egress. For a Python-first RAG prototype the free tier and open-source build are hard to beat; the paid tier only makes sense once you need the managed reliability.
Cost drivers
- 1The $5 Starter and $100 Team credits do not roll over, so an underused month still bills the full base.
- 2Network egress at $0.09/GiB adds up fast when a query returns large result sets.
- 3Writes at $2.50/GiB mean a big initial import can consume most of the Team credit before you have served a single query.
Watch-outs
The jump from a free Starter to a $250/mo Team plan is steep for a team that only needs slightly higher quotas, and the metered rates on top make the monthly total harder to predict than a flat subscription.
Strengths
- Runs in-memory, file-based, or client/server with zero setup.
- Python-native API with an unusually gentle learning curve.
- First-class integrations with LangChain and LlamaIndex.
Editor’s take
Individual developers and early-stage teams should stay on the free Starter tier or self-host the open-source build. Growing teams that need SOC 2 and dedicated support can take the $250/mo Team plan, but they should watch write and egress usage closely to actually spend the $100 credit rather than pay it and lose it. For a pay-as-you-go managed entry point, Pinecone is worth comparing.
Oleh KemFounder & Lead AnalystChroma price history
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Frequently asked questions
Sources & verification
| Source | What was checked | Last checked |
|---|---|---|
| Official Pricing Page | Source of verified tiers | July 16, 2026 |
| Official Website | Official vendor website | — |
| G2 | G2 verified user reviews · 4.2/5 · 6 reviews | — |
| Capterra | Capterra verified user reviews | — |
| TrustRadius | TrustRadius verified reviews | — |
| PeerSpot | PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews | — |
Every fact on this Chroma pricing page is tied to a named source and a verification date. Freshness-sensitive figures trace to the sources above; verify against the vendor before relying on them.
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