Chroma vs Marqo
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Chroma is the stronger AI pick in Vector Databases: it has a visibility score of 18.6 versus 0.7 for Marqo, and ranks ahead in 100% of the answers that name both.
Choose Chroma if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (18.6 vs 0.7)
- AI answers describe it more positively (50% vs 0% positive)
- You need a self-hosted or on-premises option
- You need SOC 2 Type II coverage
Choose Marqo if…
- You prefer a larger, established vendor (51–200 employees)
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 2
| Metric | Chroma | Marqo |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 18.6% | 0.7% |
| Change vs last week | New | New |
| Rank in Vector Databases | #6 | #25 |
| Share of voice | 6.8% | 0.4% |
| Mentions this run | 32 | 2 |
| Positive in AI answers | 50% | 0% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Chroma 0pp · Marqo 0pp over 0 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Chroma leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
2 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | Chroma | Marqo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official website of the top vector database vendors | ChatGPT | #4 | #6 |
| Official website of the top vector database vendors | Perplexity | #4 | #14 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Chroma | Marqo |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $250 / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | Open-source self-hosted, serverless managed Chroma Cloud, or Bring Your Own Cloud in the customer's VPC. | Deployed via API or one-click integrations with commerce platforms |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II | — |
| Support | Community support through Discord and the open-source community on the Starter plan, Slack support on the Team plan, Dedicated support and customized SLAs on the Enterprise plan | Talk to a search expert, Book a 30-minute demo with a live proof-of-concept on your own catalog |
| Founded | 2022 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, United States | San Francisco, California, USA |
| Employees | 11–50 | 51–200 |
| Funding | Seed · $18M raised | Series A · $18M raised |
| Best for | Developers building retrieval-augmented generation prototypes, who get a fast start locally, and teams that later need a managed or self-hosted search system. | Enterprise retail brands with large product catalogs in fashion, beauty, electronics and home goods |
Plans side by side
Marqo
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Chroma
- Fast path from local notebook prototyping to serverless cloud production
- Free and open source when self-hosted
- Lightweight and developer-friendly for prototypes
- Best for local development, prototyping and MVPs
- Good for small-to-medium RAG and semantic search applications
- Not suited to high-scale production workloads
Marqo
Profile in progress.
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Chroma vs Marqo”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/chroma-vs-marqo, data of Nov 2, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.