Relevan vs Chroma
Chroma is open-source search infrastructure for AI. You can run it yourself or use Chroma Cloud. Your team chooses the embedding model and the ranking. Relevan is a managed search engine that tunes the retrieval of each index for you.
The facts about Chroma come from its public pages, as of October 2026. The sources are at the end of this page.
Summary
| Chroma | Relevan | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Search infrastructure | Relevance tuning for each index |
| License | Open source, Apache 2.0 | Hosted service |
| Retrieval | Dense vectors, sparse vectors (BM25, SPLADE), full-text, regex, and metadata filters | Keyword retrieval on OpenSearch, with optional hybrid retrieval |
| Who tunes relevance | Your team | Relevan |
| Pricing | Chroma Cloud: usage-based, with a free plan and a $250 Team plan | Monthly plans, from a free plan |
What Chroma does
- Chroma stores documents, embeddings, and metadata in collections.
- It supports dense, sparse, and hybrid vector search, full-text and regex search, and metadata filters.
- You can use any embedding model.
- Forking makes a copy of a collection, for versions, A/B tests, and roll-outs.
- Chroma Cloud stores data in object storage with a memory and SSD cache.
Vendor-reported figures for Chroma Cloud: at 100,000 vectors of 384 dimensions, a p50 query latency of 20 ms warm and 650 ms cold. The limits are 5 million records per collection and 1 million collections per database.
Chroma Cloud prices by use: $2.50 per GiB written, $0.33 per GiB stored each month, $0.0075 per TiB queried, and $0.09 per GiB returned. The Starter plan is $0 plus use, with $5 of credits. The Team plan is $250 a month plus use, with $100 of credits.
What Relevan does
Relevan is a managed search engine for your own records, such as products, profiles, and documents. You send JSON records and a mapping. Relevan runs the OpenSearch index, and agents search it through an HTTP API.
- Each search response tells the agent why each result matched, and suggests what to try next.
- Relevan tunes retrieval and ranking for each index. Compare Relevan with other search tools explains what Relevan tunes, and when.
- The feedback endpoint records clicks, LLM judgments, and conversions for each search.
- Relevan prices by plan, from a free plan. See pricing.
The main difference
Chroma gives you the parts of a retrieval system, and you choose the models and the ranking. Relevan sets and changes the retrieval and ranking configuration of each index for you.
When to choose Chroma
- You want open-source software that you can run locally or on your own servers.
- You want to choose your own embedding model.
- You build many small collections, for example one for each user.
- You want forks of a collection to test changes.
When to choose Relevan
- You do not want to choose models, write ranking code, or run a search service.
- Your data is structured records with fields, such as a product catalog or profiles.
- You want the retrieval of each index tuned to its own documents and queries.
- Your agents need an explanation of each match and a suggestion for the next search.
Sources
Read on October 29, 2026:
- Chroma homepage: https://www.trychroma.com
- Chroma pricing: https://www.trychroma.com/pricing
- Chroma documentation: https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/introduction