Hasura vs Chroma
Instant GraphQL + REST on your data sources — with permissions
vs. Open-source vector DB designed for AI apps — embeddings-first, dev-friendly
Pricing tiers
Hasura
OSS (Community)
Free forever (Apache-2.0). Self-host GraphQL Engine v2.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud Free
$0. 1 project. 60 req/min. Community support.
Free
Professional
$99/mo (starts). Usage-based compute + data pass-through. Production SLAs.
$99/mo
Advanced
Custom. Multi-region, dedicated, observability, SSO.
Custom
Enterprise
Custom. On-prem / air-gap / advanced security.
Custom
Chroma
Cloud — Free
$5 free credits. Great for trying it out.
Free
Cloud — Pro
$100 credits included, then usage-based. Dedicated resources, SOC2, priority support.
$0 base (usage-based)
Self-Host (OSS)
MIT-licensed. Embedded or Docker. Free forever.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud — Enterprise
Custom. VPC, compliance, dedicated support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Hasura vs cloud-free on Chroma.
| Metric | Hasura | Chroma |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Hasura · 14 features
- Actions — Custom resolvers via HTTP.
- Data Connector Hub — Build connectors to any source.
- Event Triggers — DB changes → webhook.
- GraphQL API — Auto GraphQL over relational + NoSQL.
- Hasura DDN (v3) — Multi-source supergraph with OpenDD.
- JWT Auth — Pluggable JWT verification.
- Metadata Migrations — Git-versioned Hasura config.
- Permissions — Row + column + session-based.
- Query Caching — Edge caching with cache-control directive.
- Remote Schemas — Merge external GraphQL into supergraph.
- REST Endpoints — Turn any GraphQL op into REST.
- Scheduled Triggers — Cron + one-off webhook triggers.
- Subscriptions — Live queries via WS.
- Webhook Auth — Custom auth via webhook.
Chroma · 11 features
- Client-Server Mode — Run Chroma via Docker; clients connect over HTTP.
- Collections — Named groups of embeddings + metadata.
- Distributed (Cloud) — Horizontal scaling on Chroma Cloud.
- Embedded Mode — In-process Python — chromadb.Client() and go. Zero setup.
- Embedding Functions — Plug-in embedders (OpenAI, Cohere, SentenceTransformers, HF).
- Full-Text Search — BM25 + vector hybrid.
- Metadata Filters — Where-clause query language.
- Migration Tools — Import from Pinecone + other stores.
- Multi-Modal — Text + image embeddings (CLIP, etc.).
- Python + JS APIs — Same API shape across both SDKs.
- Serverless Cloud — Pay for storage + queries, auto-scale.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Hasura | Chroma |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | ddn CLI (v3), hasura CLI | — |
| SDK | — | chromadb (JS/TS), chromadb (Python) |
| REST | Hasura REST Endpoints, Metadata API | Chroma HTTP API |
| GRAPHQL | Hasura GraphQL Engine | — |
| MCP | — | Chroma MCP |
| OTHER | Data Connectors, Hasura Console | Docker Server, Embedded Mode (in-process Python) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Hasura and Chroma are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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