head to head · open source
TiDB vs Chroma
TiDB has 40,706 GitHub stars, 6,285 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chroma has 29,627 stars, 2,604 forks, 843 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. TiDB leads on adoption by 37% (40,706 vs 29,627 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Chroma is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Chroma 9%. TiDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, database), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| TiDB | Chroma | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 30K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick TiDB if
- You weight community size — 41K 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 TiDB
TiDB TiDB (/’taɪdiːbi:/, "Ti" stands for Titanium) is an open source, cloud native, distributed SQL database designed for high availability, horizontal and vertical scalability, strong consistency, and high performance. Key Features Quick Start Need Help? Architecture Contributing License See Also Acknowledgments Key Features Distributed Transactions : TiDB uses a two phase commit protocol to ensure ACID compliance, providing strong consistency. Transactions span multiple nodes, and TiDB's distributed nature ensures data correctness even in the presence of network partitions or node failures. Horizontal and…
About Chroma
Chroma the open source data infrastructure for AI . Docs Homepage Chroma Cloud Our hosted service, Chroma Cloud, powers serverless vector, hybrid, and full text search. It's extremely fast, cost effective, scalable and painless. Create a DB and try it out in under 30 seconds with $5 of free credits. Get started with Chroma Cloud API The core API is only 4 functions (run our 💡 Google Colab): Learn about all features on our Docs Get involved Chroma is a rapidly developing project. We welcome PR contributors and ideas for how to improve the project. Join the conversation on Discord contributing channel Review the…
read the full Chroma overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or Chroma more popular?
TiDB has 40,706 GitHub stars and Chroma has 29,627. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and Chroma free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Chroma under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and Chroma?
TiDB 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, TiDB or Chroma?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,706 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.