Chroma vs Milvus
A side-by-side look at 2 AI & ML tools for 2026 — the verdict, pricing, ratings, features, and what readers think.
trychroma.com
Best for AI developers who want an open-source vector and full-text search database they can run locally or in the cloud
The open-source AI-native embedding database for LLM applications.
Visit Chroma
M
milvus.io
Best for Teams that need an open-source vector database proven at billion-vector scale, self-hosted or managed
Open-source vector database built for scalable AI similarity search.
Visit MilvusPricing compared
Chroma
$0/mo + usage
Milvus
$0/mo
Head to head
| Chroma | Milvus | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $0/mo + usage | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Starter plan with $5 in free credits | Zilliz Cloud: free tier plus 30-day trial on paid plans |
| Platforms | Web · API · CLI · Self-hosted | Web · API · CLI · Self-hosted |
Pros & cons
Chroma
Pros
- Open source, so you can self-host and export your data easily.
- Chroma Cloud is serverless with usage-based pricing and a $0 Starter plan.
- Combines vector, full-text and metadata search in one system.
- Simple to start locally and integrates with LangChain and LlamaIndex.
- Team plan adds SOC II, Slack support and volume discounts.
Cons
- Usage-based billing (write, storage, query, network) is harder to forecast than flat pricing.
- Service pauses when a usage limit is hit until the limit is changed.
- Starter plan is limited to 10 databases and 10 team members.
- The $100 of included usage on the Team plan does not roll over.
Milvus
Pros
- Open-source vector database built for billion-scale similarity search.
- Managed option through Zilliz Cloud on AWS, GCP and Azure with serverless and dedicated clusters.
- Zilliz Cloud Free tier includes 5 GB storage and up to 5 collections.
- Enterprise plan lists a 99.95% uptime SLA, SSO, RBAC and VPC peering.
- BYOC deployment keeps data in your own cloud account.
Cons
- Self-hosting Milvus means running and tuning a distributed system yourself.
- Managed pricing is split across Zilliz Cloud plans and cluster types, so it takes effort to estimate.
- Enterprise features such as SSO and audit logs are on paid Zilliz Cloud plans, not the free tier.
- Heavier to adopt than lightweight embedded options for small prototypes.
Features compared
| Chroma | Milvus | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans & pricing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Free trial | — | ✗ No |
| Pricing model | Open source / managed cloud | Open source / managed cloud (usage-based) |
| Platforms & access | ||
| Web app | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Self-hosted option | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Offline mode | — | ✗ No |
| Integrations & extensibility | ||
| Public API | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Native integrations | LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI, Hugging Face | LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, PyTorch |
| Automation (Zapier/Make) | — | ✗ No |
| Security & compliance | ||
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓ Yes |
| Two-factor auth | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| SOC 2 | — | ✓ Yes |
| GDPR compliant | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Encryption at rest | — | ✓ Yes |
| Support | ||
| Email support | — | ✓ Yes |
| Knowledge base | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |