Chroma

Chroma is an open-source (Apache 2.0) search and embedding database that gives LLM and AI applications long-term memory and retrieval, combining vector, sparse/lexical (BM25, SPLADE), full-text, regex, and metadata search in one system. It's aimed at developers and engineering teams building RAG pipelines and AI search, from local prototypes to production, offered as both self-hosted OSS and a serverless cloud. What most sets it apart is an object-storage-based architecture with automatic query-aware data tiering, which the vendor says makes it up to 10x cheaper to run at scale with no engineering ops.