Chroma vs. Pgvector
Compare Chroma vs. Pgvector by the following set of capabilities. We want you to choose the best database for you, even if it’s not us.
Chroma vs. Pgvector on Scalability
Yes. pgvector enables separation of storage and compute by allowing you to store your application data on one database while storing vectors, lookup values, and filter values on a separate database.
No. Can not scale beyond single node.
No distributed data replacement
Chroma scalability
Without any distributed data replacement, Chroma is not able to scale beyond a single node
pgvector scalability
You can use a solution like YugaByteDB to extend the capabilities of Postgres for distributed environments.
Chroma vs. Pgvector on Functionality
Performance is the biggest challenge with vector databases as the number of unstructured data elements stored in a vector database grows into hundreds of millions or billions, and horizontal scaling across multiple nodes becomes paramount.
Yes with scalar filtering
Yes. Sparse & Dense Vectors and Scalar filtering.
1 (HNSW)
HNSW & IVFFlat
Chroma functionality
Chroma uses HNSW algorithm to support kNN search.
Chroma vs. Pgvector on Purpose-built
What’s your vector database for?
A vector database is a fully managed solution for storing, indexing, and searching across a massive dataset of unstructured data that leverages the power of embeddings from machine learning models. A vector database should have the following features:
- Scalability and tunability
- Multi-tenancy and data isolation
- A complete suite of APIs
- An intuitive user interface/administrative console
pgvector is an add-on to Postgres
Python, JavaScript
Use pgvector from any language with a Postgres client
Chroma vs. Pgvector: what’s right for me?
Chroma
Chroma is maintained by a single commercial company offering a non-scalable single node. License: Apache-2.0 license
Pgvector
pgvector is a PostgreSQL extension designed to facilitate the storage, querying, and indexing of vectors within a PostgreSQL database.
License: PostgreSQL License