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
FreeBest for: Getting started quickly
- ✓Community Slack support
- ✓Vector, full-text, and metadata search
- ✓Serverless infrastructure
- ✓Access to Chroma Cloud
Chroma pricing: the quick answer
Chroma Cloud starts free as of July 8, 2026, with a Starter plan giving $5 in monthly credits, 10 databases and 10 team members. The Team plan is $250 a month with $100 of usage credit, SOC 2 and volume discounts; Enterprise is a custom quote. Above the credit, everything is metered: writes at $2.50 per GiB, storage $0.33 per GiB a month, queries $0.0075 per TiB, egress $0.09 per GiB. 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 8 vector databases tools we track.
Chroma cost calculator
What Chroma really costs
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.
Pricing Expert Take
Independent analysis · Chroma
Value Analysis
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.
Hidden Costs
- The $5 Starter and $100 Team credits do not roll over, so an underused month still bills the full base.
- Network egress at $0.09/GiB adds up fast when a query returns large result sets.
- Writes at $2.50/GiB mean a big initial import can consume most of the Team credit before you have served a single query.
Red Flags
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.
"Chroma collection tradeups are the most profitable at the moment with a positive ROI."
Based on analysis of recent Reddit and G2 discussions.
Green Wins
- 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.
"It makes it simple for me to keep track of the number of leaves"
G2
Verdict
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.
Chroma price history
Cheaper Vector Databases tools
Frequently asked questions
How does Chroma pricing compare?
See how Chroma's 3 pricing plans stack up against similar Vector Databases tools.
Research Reports
Sources & Data Trail · Chroma
- 1.Official Pricing Page·Source of verified tiers(Checked: 2026-07-08)
- 2.Official Website·Official vendor website
- 3.G2·G2 verified user reviews · 4.2/5 · 6 reviews
- 4.Capterra·Capterra verified user reviews
- 5.TrustRadius·TrustRadius verified reviews
- 6.PeerSpot·PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews