Chroma
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 2 of 10 vector databases by recommenders
Open-source Apache 2.0 database for AI search, favored for similarity search over documents and quick setup. Critics say results can disappoint at larger scale.
Open-source Apache 2.0 database for AI search, favored for similarity search over documents and quick setup. Critics say results can disappoint at larger scale.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Open source under Apache 2.0
“Chroma is the open-source search database for AI applications.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2026)” “Chroma is the open-source database designed for AI.”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)” “Chroma is also apache 2.0 - fully open source.”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “The Case Against PGVector” Good for similarity search over documents
“For fuzzy similarity search over unstructured documents Qdrant and Chroma are the right tools.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Agent memory is structured not fuzzy.why are we all using vector DBs for it?” “I've even made a IEITYuan/Yuan-embedding-2.0-en database of my manpages with chroma”
Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “A guide to local coding models” “database of my manpages with chroma”
Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “A guide to local coding models” Widely used across projects
“I use Chroma for a lot of projects.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “7 Years, 2 Rebuilds, 40K+ Stars: Milvus Recap and Roadmap” “Only brinicle, and chroma survived”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “I designed a vector engine to be RAM/CPU efficient” “I use ChromaDB with Python”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Started Learning Pentesting” - Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image Klein”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Results fall short of expectations
“I was quite disappointed, what I got out looked nowhere near as good as what was advertised”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters” “the results can be disappointing”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters” Recall degrades at larger scale
“Works well, but I didn't tested on larger scale”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How are you doing RAG locally?” “recall quality went to garbage at ~5k memories”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: A memory database that forgets, consolidates, and detects contradiction”
Other vector databases people recommend
The four most recommended other vector databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qdrant | 22 | 3 | 88% | 10 | — | Approved |
| ChromaThis page | 17 | 5 | 77% | 7 | — | Approved |
| sqlite-vec | 17 | 3 | 85% | 7 | — | Approved |
| turbopuffer | 13 | 2 | 87% | 8 | — | Approved |
| LanceDB | 12 | 2 | 86% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
17 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Back to Chroma it is then.”
“I use ChromaDB with Python”
“recall quality went to garbage at ~5k memories”
“For fuzzy similarity search over unstructured documents Qdrant and Chroma are the right tools.”
“Chroma is the open-source search database for AI applications.”
“the overhead of managing a vector index wasn't worth the hallucinations”
“Works well, but I didn't tested on larger scale”
“Only brinicle, and chroma survived”
“I've even made a IEITYuan/Yuan-embedding-2.0-en database of my manpages with chroma”
“database of my manpages with chroma”
“I use Chroma for a lot of projects.”
“I was quite disappointed, what I got out looked nowhere near as good as what was advertised”
“the results can be disappointing”
“it's just a few lines of code to get a basic persistant ChromaDB going”
“It also supports full text search.”
“Chroma is the open-source database designed for AI.”
“Chroma is also apache 2.0 - fully open source.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.