Chroma vs Pinecone comparison

Read 9 Pinecone reviews

3,108 Views
3,108 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Chroma

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Pinecone and Chroma are competitors in vector database solutions, each offering distinct tools for managing and querying data. Pinecone's attractive pricing and support are well-regarded, while Chroma is valued for its advanced features, providing substantial value for many customers.

Features: Pinecone stands out with ease of integration, real-time data indexing, and robust search functionality. Chroma offers flexibility, various vector search algorithms, and advanced analytics capabilities. Pinecone provides a streamlined approach, whereas Chroma's feature set suits data-driven environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Deploying Pinecone is straightforward with rapid deployment and easy configuration, backed by reliable and efficient customer service. Chroma offers flexible deployment options customizable for complex environments, though setup may take longer. Its customer service is notable for deep technical expertise crucial for complex issue resolution.

Pricing and ROI: Pinecone is appreciated for competitive pricing and attractive ROI, suitable for businesses needing quick setup with lower upfront costs. Chroma's higher pricing reflects its sophisticated capabilities, providing solid ROI for organizations leveraging its advanced features. Pinecone is ideal for economical, straightforward solutions, while Chroma caters to organizations with complex data needs seeking long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Chroma vs. Pinecone Report (Updated: December 2025).

Chroma vs. Pinecone

Download the complete report

Helped 879,259 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pinecone

Ranking in Vector Databases

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Data Analysis (12th), AI Content Creation (5th)

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 Pinecone is 7.3%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pinecone	7.3%
Chroma	9.7%
Other	83.0%

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

Sameer Bhangale

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.

Read full review

Pradeep Gudipati

Chief Technology Advisor at Kovaad technologies Pvt Ltd

Faced challenges with metadata filtering but have achieved reliable long-term memory for chat applications

We were looking at multiple options for a vector database, and we found Pinecone to be the easiest to integrate into our solution. Plus, it has a very generous free tier, which helps us as a startup. The best features Pinecone offers are quick setup and good indexing for us. The retrieval mechanisms are fast, and the integration with Python as with JavaScript and TypeScript libraries that Pinecone provides are very robust. Authentication is also very good. The namespaces feature allows us to break down or store data for each user separately, reducing interference and maintaining privacy as an important feature. Pinecone has positively impacted our organization by enhancing efficiency for the team, and the long-term effect has been that the chats have become much more personalized due to the memory added through a vector database. We are seeing that the trainees getting trained on the platform are more satisfied with the results or messages generated by AI.

Read full review

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 most valuable features of the solution are similarity search and maximal marginal relevance search for retrieval purposes."

"We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases."

"The best thing about Pinecone is its private local host feature. It displays all the maintenance parameters and lets us view the data sent to the database. We can also see the status of the CD and which application it corresponds to."

"The product's setup phase was easy."

"Pinecone has positively impacted our organization by enhancing efficiency for the team, and the long-term effect has been that the chats have become much more personalized due to the memory added through a vector database."

"Pinecone has positively impacted my organization by helping people in needle-in-a-haystack situations, as previously they had to grind through PDF documents, PowerPoint documents, and websites, but now with Pinecone, they can ask questions and receive references to documents along with the page numbers where that information exists, so they can use it as a reference or backtrack, especially for things such as FDA approvals where they can quote the exact page number from PDF documents, eliminating hallucination and providing real-time data that relies on an external vector database with enough guardrails to ensure it won't provide information not in the vector database, confining it to the information present in the indexes."

"The semantic search capability is very good."

"The most valuable feature of Pinecone is its managed service aspect. There are many vector databases available, but Pinecone stands out in the market. It is very flexible, allowing us to input any kind of data dimensions into the platform. This makes it easy to use for both technical and non-technical users."

More Pinecone pros

Cons

"I think Chroma doesn't have a ready-made containerized image available."

"The hybrid algorithm needs improvement."

"Onboarding could be better and smoother."

"If Pinecone gave us RAG as a service, we'd be more than happy to use that."

"For testing purposes, the product should offer support locally as it is one area where the tool has shortcomings."

"Pinecone is good as it is, but had it been on AWS infrastructure, we wouldn't experience some network lags because it's outside AWS."

"One major issue I have noticed with Pinecone is that it does not allow me to search based on metadata."

"The product fails to offer a serverless type of storage capacity."

"The tool does not confirm whether a file is deleted or not."

More Pinecone cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current version is an open-source."

"I think Pinecone is cheaper to use than other options I've explored. However, I also remember that they offer a paid version."

"Pinecone is not cheap; it's actually quite expensive. We find that using Pinecone can raise our budget significantly. On the other hand, using open-source options is more budget-friendly."

"I have experience with the tool's free version."

"The solution is relatively cheaper than other vector DBs in the market."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vector Databases solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

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

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

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 Pinecone?

We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases.

What needs improvement with Pinecone?

I give Pinecone a nine out of ten because I hope it provides an end-to-end agentic solution, but currently, it doesn't have those agentic capabilities, meaning I have to create a Streamlit applicat...

What is your primary use case for Pinecone?

My main use case for Pinecone is creating vector indexes for GenAI applications. A specific example of how I use Pinecone in one of my projects is utilizing a RAG pipeline where I take text from PD...

Supabase Vector vs Chroma

Comparisons

LanceDB vs Chroma

Compared 20% of the time

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Chroma

Compared 11% of the time

Redis vs Chroma

Compared 10% of the time

Cassandra vs Chroma

Compared 2% of the time

More Chroma Competitors

Supabase Vector vs Pinecone

Compared 30% of the time

OpenSearch vs Pinecone

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Pinecone

Compared 14% of the time

LanceDB vs Pinecone

Compared 6% of the time

Weaviate Enterprise Cloud vs Pinecone

Compared 2% of the time

More Pinecone Competitors

Product Reports

Vector Databases

Download Chroma product report

Download Pinecone product report

Overview

Chroma is a versatile tool that enhances visual display quality, offering features such as color accuracy improvement, brightness adjustment, and image settings fine-tuning.

It creates vibrant and immersive visual experiences, making it valuable for content creators, gamers, and design professionals.

Chroma's customizable lighting options and seamless integration with other devices are highly praised, allowing users to personalize their setups and create visually stunning effects.

Its compatibility with various devices ensures a cohesive and immersive user experience.

Chroma

Pinecone is a powerful tool for efficiently storing and retrieving vector embeddings. It is highly praised for its scalability, speed, and ease of integration with existing workflows.

Users find it particularly useful for similarity search, recommendation systems, and natural language processing.

Its efficient search capabilities, seamless integration with existing systems, and ability to handle large-scale datasets make it a valuable tool for data analysis and retrieval.

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

1. Airbnb 2. DoorDash 3. Instacart 4. Lyft 5. Pinterest 6. Reddit 7. Slack 8. Snapchat 9. Spotify 10. TikTok 11. Twitter 12. Uber 13. Zoom 14. Adobe 15. Amazon 16. Apple 17. Facebook 18. Google 19. IBM 20. Microsoft 21. Netflix 22. Salesforce 23. Shopify 24. Square 25. Tesla 26. TikTok 27. Twitch 28. Uber Eats 29. WhatsApp 30. Yelp 31. Zillow 32. Zynga

Chroma vs. Pinecone