head to head · open source
Milvus vs Chroma
Milvus has 46,166 GitHub stars, 4,257 forks, 1,405 open issues and last shipped today. Chroma has 29,333 stars, 2,522 forks, 843 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Milvus leads on adoption by 57% (46,166 vs 29,333 stars). Milvus is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Chroma is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Milvus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Chroma 9%. Milvus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Milvus | Chroma | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 29K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Milvus if
- You weight community size — 46K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Chroma if
- You want the Chroma feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Chroma fits your workflow better
About Milvus
Milvus is a high performance, cloud native vector database written in Go and C++, designed to power AI applications by efficiently storing, indexing, and searching large scale unstructured data such as text, images, and multi modal embeddings. It implements hardware accelerated approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search using algorithms like HNSW, FAISS, and DiskANN, and supports both real time streaming updates and batch ingestion. Milvus lives in the GenAI infrastructure ecosystem, serving as the persistent storage and retrieval layer for embedding based workloads including RAG, recommendation, and image search.…
read the full Milvus overview →
About Chroma
Chroma is an open source vector database designed to store, index, and retrieve embeddings for AI applications. It runs as a local Python or JavaScript client or in client server mode, providing a lightweight infrastructure layer for AI search and retrieval workloads. Built in Rust and licensed under Apache 2.0, it targets developers building RAG, agents, and other embedding dependent systems.
read the full Chroma overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Milvus or Chroma more popular?
Milvus has 46,166 GitHub stars and Chroma has 29,333. Milvus has the larger community by that measure.
Are Milvus and Chroma free?
Both are open source. Milvus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Chroma under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Milvus and Chroma?
Milvus is written in Go and Chroma in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Milvus or Chroma?
Choose Milvus if you want the larger community (46,166 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Chroma if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.