head to head · open source
faiss vs Chroma
faiss has 41,256 GitHub stars, 4,586 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Chroma has 29,627 stars, 2,604 forks, 843 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. faiss leads on adoption by 39% (41,256 vs 29,627 stars). faiss is written in C++ under MIT; Chroma is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. faiss has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Chroma 9%. faiss 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.
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Side by side
| faiss | Chroma | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 30K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.6K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick faiss if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- 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 faiss
Faiss Faiss is a library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors. It contains algorithms that search in sets of vectors of any size, up to ones that possibly do not fit in RAM. It also contains supporting code for evaluation and parameter tuning. Faiss is written in C++ with complete wrappers for Python/numpy. Some of the most useful algorithms are implemented on the GPU. It is developed primarily at Meta's Fundamental AI Research group. News See CHANGELOG.md for detailed information about latest features. Introduction Faiss contains several methods for similarity search. It assumes that…
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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 faiss or Chroma more popular?
faiss has 41,256 GitHub stars and Chroma has 29,627. faiss has the larger community by that measure.
Are faiss and Chroma free?
Both are open source. faiss is licensed under MIT and Chroma under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between faiss and Chroma?
faiss is written in C++ 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, faiss or Chroma?
Choose faiss if you want the larger community (41,256 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Chroma if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.