When should I pick Chroma over Pinecone?

Pick Chroma if: You're prototyping retrieval on your laptop, or want vectors in files with no server.

When should I pick Pinecone over Chroma?

Pick Pinecone if: You want a hosted index with nothing to operate.

Which is cheaper, Chroma or Pinecone?

At vectors stored 1 million vectors, queries 1 million queries, vectors written or updated 500k writes: Chroma $51/mo (Starter), Pinecone $113/mo (Standard), at list prices.

Which do more makers use for vector database?

Among makers' products we track: Chroma 13, Pinecone 55.

How do Chroma and Pinecone compare in cost as you grow?

At 100k vectors Pinecone costs less ($0 vs $1.32); from about 500k vectors Chroma does ($15 vs $20). Cheapest usable plan at each scale, at list prices.

Are people switching from Chroma to Pinecone?

Public GitHub pull requests since 2024-10-02: 6 from Chroma to Pinecone.

Chroma vs Pinecone for vector database: which fits you

Which fits you

Choose Chroma if

You're prototyping retrieval on your laptop, or want vectors in files with no server

Use it whenYou're still figuring out whether retrieval works for your use case.

Trade-offFor production you either run its server yourself or move to Chroma Cloud.

Choose Pinecone if

You want a hosted index with nothing to operate

Use it whenYou want vector search without running any infrastructure.

Trade-offClosed source and cloud-only, so leaving means re-indexing somewhere else.

At a glance

	Chroma	Pinecone
Used by	13 makers' products · 69 open-source projects	55 makers' products · 23 open-source projects
Cost at default usagevectors stored 1 million vectors, queries 1 million queries, vectors written or updated 500k writes	$51/mo Starter	$113/mo Standard
Moved to it on GitHubpull requests since Oct 2024	fewer than 3	6 from Chroma
Downloads	236.5k/wk−12% vs npm	822.6k/wk−35% vs npm
Pricing	Free and open source to self-host (Apache-2.0); Chroma Cloud is usage-based with free starting credits. · paid from Usage-based	Free Starter tier; Builder $20/month flat, Standard usage-based with a $50/month minimum, plus an Enterprise tier. · paid from $20/mo
Free tier	Yes	Yes
Open source	Yes · self-hostable	No
Incidents, 90 daysfrom its status page	no public status feed	9 (6 major)

Cost as you grow

At 100k vectors Pinecone costs less ($0 vs $1.32); from about 500k vectors Chroma does ($15 vs $20). They're different kinds of tool — embedded / local-first and managed vector store — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

Pinecone Chromax: vectors stored (1,536 dimensions, about 6 gb per million) (million vectors), other usage scaled with it · cheapest usable plan at each point, list prices · try your own numbers

The numbers, plan by plan

Vectors stored (1,536 dimensions, about 6 GB per million)	Chroma	Pinecone
0.1	$1.32 Starter	$0 Starter
0.5	$15 Starter	$20 Builder
1	$51 Starter	$113 Standard
5	$1,093 Starter	$2,532 Standard
10	$4,281 Starter	$9,987 Standard
50	$105,226 Starter	$246,797 Standard
100	$419,999 Starter	$985,753 Standard

From each vendor's pricing page: Chroma, Pinecone.

Who moves from one to the other

Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "Chroma to Pinecone" or the reverse — real code changes, by developers in general rather than makers only.

Fewer than 3 pull requests move from Pinecone to Chroma.

Chroma →

Pinecone6 PRs

Migrate vectorstore from Chroma to Pineconeparas-the-coder/Agentic-Hybrid-RAG · 2026-05-31
switched from chroma to pinecone vector dbrchadha/rag-application · 2026-03-17
feat(rag): Migrate from Chroma to Pinecone and add CI-based indexingrjacaac211/nutriguide-ai · 2026-03-16
Chroma to pineconeabhiTagline28/youtube-transcript-rag · 2025-09-08
Change chroma to pineconedanielkwan2004/TechJam2025 · 2025-08-30
feat: migrate from Chroma to Pinecone vector databaseArohasina/chat-with-websites · 2025-06-30

All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗

What makers say

Makers on using it for vector database, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Chroma

Chroma makes it super easy to manage embeddings for AI apps. We love the open-source focus and how quickly it integrates into RAG pipelines.

VoltAgent, the makerSep 2026 ↗

Jeff (the founder) is incredible - super knowledgeable and I'm super bullish on the direction of the product. Let's go!

Clarm, the makerSep 2026 ↗

Powered memory storage with a dead-simple, blazing-fast open-source vector DB. Far easier to self-host than alternatives.

Convo, the makerSep 2026 ↗

2 more on the Chroma page →

On Pinecone

TwelveLabs uses Pinecone to efficiently store and search the vector embeddings produced by our embedding model, enabling fast, scalable retrieval across large video and text datasets.

TwelveLabs, the makerSep 2026 ↗

Though we are using function tools to retrieve information from our integrations in real-time, we also use Pinecone to retrieve relevant long-term information.

Tometo, the makerSep 2026 ↗

We needed a vector database that's fast, reliable, and serverless for our RAG system. Pinecone was the easiest to set up and performs consistently at scale.

Starnus, the makerOct 2026 ↗

35 more on the Pinecone page →

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Chroma

Most loved

Open source and easy to self-host, with a simple API that gets embeddings stored quickly. PH HN
Full-text and regex search sit alongside vector search, and collection forking suits changing code. trychroma.com HN HN 2 HN 3
Plugs quickly into RAG pipelines and local-first tools built on LangChain or Ollama. PH HN HN 2 HN 3

Watch-outs

Its feature set is narrower than Milvus or Weaviate, lacking vector quantization and some index options. HN HN 2

On Product Hunt: 5.0★, 10 reviews

Pinecone

Most loved

Getting started is quick, with clear documentation and a generous free tier. PH PH 2 PH 3 PH 4
Handles large vector volumes with low latency as usage grows. PH PH 2
The serverless tier keeps costs down while iterating and at scale. PH PH 2 PH 3

Watch-outs

It is one more database to run and sync, when Postgres or plain search often covers the need. HN HN 2 HN 3 HN 4
Its core features have become a commodity, and it was late to integrated embeddings compared with rivals. HN HN 2 HN 3 HN 4
It stores embeddings without the source chunk, unlike most other vector databases. HN

On Product Hunt: 4.9★, 74 reviews · mentioned most: ease of use, scalability, high-performance vector database

Who uses each

Chroma13 makers' products

Clarm

Conduit Maximem Synap Reef

Supaboard AI

VoltAgent Factory Propel Allyson Convo DocuSpark Polarity +1 more

Pinecone55 makers' products

Human Behavior InboxAgents

Kick

Kipps AI Kroolo

Kuse +43 more

Used by both — often one replacing the other, or each for a different part of the product

VoltAgent

What makers pair each with

With Pinecone

Neither quite right?

See the whole vector database decision →

pgvectorInside your databaseApps already on Postgres that want vector search in the same database, joined with normal tables.

QdrantOpen-source vector storeHeavy metadata filtering alongside vector search, self-hosted from one binary or on its managed cloud.vs Chroma →vs Pinecone →

WeaviateOpen-source vector storeHybrid search that mixes keyword and vector results, with built-in modules that can create embeddings for you.vs Pinecone →

turbopufferManaged vector storeVery large or many-tenant indexes where storing everything on object storage keeps cost down.vs Chroma →vs Pinecone →