Chroma Cloud
- Free allowance
- Starter plan, $0/month + usage: "per month + $5 in free credits"; "Free credits then usage-based pricing." The $5 is offered to new users and "in most cases your credits do not expire".
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- volume-quotaUSD 5 of credits, which is a spend cap and not a tier
- Evidence
- documented18 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | Starter plan, $0/month + usage: "per month + $5 in free credits"; "Free credits then usage-based pricing." The $5 is offered to new users and "in most cases your credits do not expire". unit credits; metered on none; metered on spend: the USD 5 credit is spent against usage billed on four meters, USD 2.50 per GiB written, USD 0.33 per GiB per month stored, USD 0.0075 per TiB queried and USD 0.09 per GiB returned |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
|
| Binding | volume-quota the one-time USD 5 credit runs out first: it is counted per account across all collections, and at USD 2.50 per GiB written it pays for 2 GiB of writes before any storage, query or returned-data charge |
| Identity | email sign-in with a GitHub or Google account; the sign-up page shows no card field; a vendor video posted 2025-06-30 says the USD 5 of free credits needs no credit card and says to add a credit card to keep using the service after the trial; the pricing FAQ lists credit card as the payment method for Starter and Team |
| Egress | usage-based |
| Per-object cap | 16,384 bytes per document, a Chroma Cloud quota; the total allowance is the credit (16384 bytes) |
| Retention | until the credits are spent |
| Interface | rest, cli a REST API; Python and JS clients; the open-source server is self-hostable |
| Tooling | the chromadb client libraries |
| Composes with | the hosted Starter plan is a USD 5 credit for new accounts with usage-based billing after it; the open-source core, which the user installs and runs on a rented or free machine, is the last resort |
| Reliability | a usage limit, whether set by the customer or by Chroma, pauses the service until the limit is changed |
| Notes | Advertised as free and it is a trial. The $5 is a spend cap, and a spend cap that small is a fortnight of a real index rather than a tier. |
| Evidence note | documented the pricing page was read. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 18
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | Starter is listed at USD 0 plus USD 5 of free credits, with usage-based billing after |
| 2026-10-30 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the Starter plan is $0 a month and carries $5 in free credits |
| 2026-10-30 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the Starter plan opens with free credits and bills usage after them |
| 2026-10-30 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the pricing FAQ says unused credits do not expire in most cases; only the Team plan's $100 of included usage does not roll over |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing | the free allowance is $5 of credits given to new users, not a monthly grant |
| 2026-11-01 | www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCYpwEV7wVY | the vendor's own video (channel Chroma, posted 2025-06-30) says the $5 of free credits needs no credit card at sign-up |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing | the docs FAQ states the free allowance is $5 of credits offered to new users |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing | writes are billed at $2.50 per logical GiB |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.trychroma.com/cloud/quotas-limits | the quotas page caps a document at 16,384 bytes |
| 2026-11-01 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the pricing page lists four usage meters: GiB written, GiB per month stored, TiB queried and GiB returned, with their rates |
| 2026-11-01 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | a usage limit set by the customer or by Chroma pauses the service until the limit is changed |
| 2026-11-01 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the Starter plan opens with free credits and bills usage after them |
| 2026-11-01 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the Starter plan is listed at $0 a month with $5 in free credits |
| 2026-11-01 | www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCYpwEV7wVY | the vendor's video says a credit card is added to keep using Chroma after the trial credits |
| 2026-11-01 | www.trychroma.com/signup | the sign-up page offers GitHub and Google sign-in and shows no card field |
| 2026-11-01 | www.trychroma.com/pricing | the pricing FAQ lists credit card as the payment method for the Starter and Team plans |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing | billing is per account, with all collections and tenants of an account aggregated |
| 2026-11-02 | docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started | the current getting-started docs advertise Chroma Cloud with $5 in free credits included |