Every category where a model named Chroma for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Vector databases	Data platform	4%	5 of 24	27%	30	criticized challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Chroma yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Chroma across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	1	2	1	5
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	2	0	2	4
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	1	0	2
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	0	1	2	4
Mistral Small	0	0	2	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	1	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	2	1	2	5
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	0	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	2	0	1	3

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct8 labelsNone

Paraphrase5 labelsNone

Comparative20 labels2not counted in share

Budget-constrained17 labels4

Scale-constrained12 labelsNone

Negative16 labels2not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative78 labels in all, every segment counted; 4 of the 8 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Chroma (Best for Prototyping & Small-Scale Startups) ... 100% free open-source, embedded mode runs in your Python app with zero infra cost” Grok 4.1 Fast · Vector databases · budget prompt · first choice

“For a budget-conscious company, Chroma is ideal for initial development” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Vector databases · budget prompt · first choice

“Best for prototyping only: Chroma — free and easy to start, but ... better fit for local prototyping rather than durable production at scale” Perplexity Sonar · Vector databases · budget prompt · alternative

“Best if you want something very lightweight for prototyping/small-scale use: Chroma” GPT-5.4 mini · Vector databases · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Chroma is fantastic for local prototyping and MVPs, but historically lacks the enterprise-grade scaling” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Vector databases · direct prompt · hard negative

“Avoid for production — use for prototyping only” MiniMax M2.5 · Vector databases · negative prompt · hard negative

“Avoid for production workloads” Kimi K2 · Vector databases · negative prompt · hard negative

“Avoid using Chroma if you expect your database to handle millions of vectors or require high concurrent read/write throughput.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Vector databases · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Chroma, over the 78 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Chroma was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Qdrant74 of 7819Not in the top three

Pinecone74 of 7814Not in the top three

Weaviate71 of 783Not in the top three

pgvector62 of 7827Not in the top three

Milvus56 of 780Not in the top three

LanceDB18 of 780Not in the top three

FAISS13 of 780Not in the top three

Vespa13 of 780Not in the top three

Elasticsearch10 of 780Not in the top three

Redis10 of 780Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Chroma. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 67 of the 78 answers that named Chroma and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

firecrawl.dev51

encore.dev41

dev.to27

iternal.ai23

medium.com22

redis.io20

atlan.com18

pecollective.com16

marktechpost.com14

tensoria.fr14

246 of the 246 domain citations in answers naming Chroma came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

firecrawl.dev/blog/best-vector-databases51

encore.dev/articles/best-vector-databases41

iternal.ai/insights/best-vector-databases-202623

atlan.com/know/top-vector-databases-enterprise-ai17

dev.to/michaelaiglobal/beyond-pinecone-a-developers-deep-dive-into-the-top-10-vector-datab14

redis.io/blog/best-open-source-vector-databases-comparison14

tensoria.fr/en/blog/vector-database-comparison14

g2.com/articles/best-vector-databases13

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Chroma's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Chroma, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at chromadb.dev is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.