head to head · open source
Qdrant vs Chroma
Qdrant has 35,390 GitHub stars, 2,793 forks, 704 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chroma has 29,625 stars, 2,604 forks, 843 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Qdrant leads on adoption by 19% (35,390 vs 29,625 stars). Qdrant is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; Chroma is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Qdrant has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Chroma 9%. Qdrant 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
| Qdrant | Chroma | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 30K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Qdrant if
- You weight community size — 35K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Qdrant
Vector Search Engine for the next generation of AI applications Qdrant (read: quadrant ) is a vector similarity search engine and vector database. It provides a production ready service with a convenient API to store, search, and manage points—vectors with an additional payload. Qdrant is tailored for extended filtering support, making it useful for all sorts of neural network or semantic based matching, faceted search, and other applications. Qdrant is written in Rust 🦀, which makes it fast and reliable even under high load. See benchmarks. With Qdrant, embeddings or neural network encoders can be turned into…
read the full Qdrant overview →
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 Qdrant or Chroma more popular?
Qdrant has 35,390 GitHub stars and Chroma has 29,625. Qdrant has the larger community by that measure.
Are Qdrant and Chroma free?
Both are open source. Qdrant is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Chroma under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Qdrant and Chroma?
Qdrant is written in Rust 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, Qdrant or Chroma?
Choose Qdrant if you want the larger community (35,390 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.