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Chroma vs Elastic Search comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Chroma
Ranking in Vector Databases
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Search
Ranking in Vector Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (8th), Search as a Service (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Chroma is 9.7%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 4.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search4.0%
Chroma9.7%
Other86.3%
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Sameer Bhangale - PeerSpot reviewer
Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Used for RAG (Retrieval-augmented generation) and provides good documentation
If I have to deploy my application in a scalable environment with lots of data and users, I sometimes need to create multiple instances of my database or have a distributed database across different machines. Using Kubernetes, I can quickly increase the horizontal spread of Milvus because it is containerized and readily available. I don't have to do anything by myself. New users can go to Chroma's 'Get Started' page and follow it like a tutorial. Then, they will be ready to use the solution. Chroma has helped us reduce the overall project post production time. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
MichaelSmith9 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Unified search has powered feature‑driven research with minimal maintenance overhead
We haven't had the opportunity to use the hybrid search with Elastic Search yet. I think there's a place for it in our long-term solution, but we're not quite there yet. We haven't yet used any AI features built into Elastic Search. To do what we want to do with Elastic Search, the queries can get complex and require a fuller understanding of the DSL. Once we start to build that understanding, it's another muscle we have, so it's not a bad thing, but it just takes a while to get up and running with expertise for our engineers. It's not hard to learn how to use more complex things in Elastic Search; it's just a challenge we're going to face.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's very easy to set up and runs easily."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"I have found the sort capability of Elastic very useful for allowing us to find the information we need very quickly."
"It helps us to analyse the logs based on the location, user, and other log parameters."
"Big businesses cannot survive without Elastic Search because it gives us very good visibility and handles our use cases very well."
"The AI-based attribute tagging is a valuable feature."
"The machine learning features of Elastic Search are very interesting, including the possibility to include models such as ELSER and different multilingual models that let us fine-tune our searches and use them in our search projects."
"The stability of Elasticsearch was very high, and I would rate it a ten."
"Elasticsearch includes a graphical user interface (GUI) called Kibana. The GUI features are extremely beneficial to us."
 

Cons

"The hybrid algorithm needs improvement."
"I think Chroma doesn't have a ready-made containerized image available."
"Elastic Search should provide better guides for developers."
"It should be easier to use. It has been getting better because many functions are pre-defined, but it still needs improvement."
"There is a maximum of 10,000 entries, so the limitation means that if I wanted to analyze certain IP addresses more than 10,000 times, I wouldn't be able to dump or print that information."
"It was not possible to use authentication three years back. You needed to buy the product's services for authentication."
"I have not explored Elastic Search at the most. Searching from vector DB is available in Elastic Search, and there is one more concept of graph searching or graph database searching. I have not explored it, but if it is not there, that would be an improvement area where Elastic Search can improve."
"The solution has quite a steep learning curve. The usability and general user-friendliness could be improved. However, that is kind of typical with products that have a lot of flexibility, or a lot of capabilities. Sometimes having more choices makes things more complex. It makes it difficult to configure it, though. It's kind of a bitter pill that you have to swallow in the beginning and you really have to get through it."
"There is a lack of technical people to develop, implement and optimize equipment operation and web queries."
"New Relic could be more flexible, similar to Elasticsearch."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current version is an open-source."
"Although the ELK Elasticsearch software is open-source, we buy the hardware."
"This is a free, open source software (FOSS) tool, which means no cost on the front-end. There are no free lunches in this world though. Technical skill to implement and support are costly on the back-end with ELK, whether you train/hire internally or go for premium services from Elastic."
"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."
"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"The solution is free."
"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"The pricing structure depends on the scalability steps."
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879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chroma?
The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it.
What needs improvement with Chroma?
The hybrid algorithm needs improvement.
What is your primary use case for Chroma?
We collect customer's feedback, and then we present it to the clients.
What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search's pricing totally depends on the server. Managed services from AWS are used, and we have worked on a self-managed Elastic Search cluster. On the AWS side, it is very expensive becaus...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search has an annoying limitation regarding page size. It has a specific limit for queries on Elastic Search, and the default is ten thousand, and we can increase it. However, after increas...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Netflix 3. Amazon 4. Facebook 5. Microsoft 6. Apple 7. Twitter 8. Spotify 9. Adobe 10. Uber 11. Airbnb 12. LinkedIn 13. Pinterest 14. Snapchat 15. Dropbox 16. Salesforce 17. IBM 18. Intel 19. Oracle 20. Cisco 21. HP 22. Dell 23. Samsung 24. Sony 25. LG 26. Panasonic 27. Philips 28. Toshiba 29. Nokia 30. Motorola 31. Xiaomi 32. Huawei
T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Chroma vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.