Is Chroma Still Maintained? Live GitHub Status
Chroma is an open-source embedding database for AI applications.
Short answer: Yes, but development has slowed. Health score 72/100. Checked 18 Oct 2026.
Chroma is slowing down. See 7 actively maintained alternatives →
What the numbers say
Chroma’s main branch received 115 commits in the last 91 days, against 334 in the same 91 days a year earlier (−66%). That is less than half of last year’s pace, which the index labels “slowing down”. It has 29,523 stars on GitHub.
Chroma usage: downloads and installs
chromadbchromadb/chromaTrend: the monthly download count is stored once a day, starting 17 Oct 2026. A chart appears here after a week of readings.
Download and pull counts include automated installs from CI pipelines, containers and mirrors, so they show how widely the software is pulled, not how many people use it. Docker Hub reports an all-time total. Numbers from different registries are not comparable with each other. Sources: PyPI download statistics via ecosyste.ms, Docker Hub, read 18 Oct 2026, 14:54 UTC.
Chroma security practices and adoption
Security practices
OpenSSF Scorecard, an automated review of how the repository is run
- Code review9/10
- Branch protectionn/a
- Dangerous workflow10/10
- Pinned dependencies0/10
- Security policy0/10
All 14 checks
- Maintained10/10
- Token permissions0/10
- OpenSSF Best Practices badge0/10
- Binary artifacts10/10
- License10/10
- Fuzzing0/10
- Signed releases0/10
- Packaging10/10
- Static analysis (SAST)0/10
Full report, run 12 Oct 2026
Used by other projects
deps.dev: PyPI packages that depend on chromadb 1.5.9
- Indirect dependents577
- All dependents1,850
- RegistryPyPI
Scorecard checks security practices such as code review, branch protection and pinned dependencies; it does not find bugs, and a low score does not mean the software is unsafe. Dependents and download counts show reach, not quality. Sources: OpenSSF Scorecard, deps.dev, GitHub, read 18 Oct 2026, 15:32 UTC.
Health score breakdown
| Part | Points | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Activity | 26.0 / 35 | 115 commits in the last 91 days (full marks at 600) |
| Trend | 6.9 / 20 | 34% of last year’s pace (full marks at 100%) |
| Recency | 15.0 / 15 | last commit 1 days ago |
| Releases | 7.0 / 10 | latest GitHub release 166 days ago |
| Community | 17.6 / 20 | 149 pull requests merged in the last 91 days (full marks at 300) |
Open issues and pull requests: 949. The score summarises maintenance signals only, not quality or security. How the score works
Chroma: common questions
Is Chroma still maintained?
Yes, but development has slowed. As of 18 October 2026, Chroma received 115 commits in the last 91 days, less than half of its pace a year earlier; the latest commit is from 17 October 2026. Its health score is 72 out of 100.
What is the latest Chroma release?
The latest GitHub release of Chroma is 1.5.9, published on 5 May 2026.
How many people contribute to Chroma?
GitHub lists 191 contributors for Chroma. 149 pull requests were merged in the last 91 days.
What licence does Chroma use?
GitHub identifies the Chroma licence as Apache-2.0. Read the licence file before commercial use.
How many times is Chroma downloaded?
The chromadb package on PyPI was downloaded 6,525,454 times in the last month, according to ecosyste.ms (checked 18 October 2026). The count includes automated installs from CI pipelines and mirrors, so it is not a count of users.
Is Chroma secure?
We cannot say whether the code is free of vulnerabilities. What can be measured is how the project is run: the OpenSSF Scorecard gives Chroma 5.1 out of 10 for security practices (run 12 October 2026), covering checks such as code review, branch protection and pinned dependencies. Read the full report and the project’s security policy before relying on it.
How is the health score calculated?
It adds five parts from public GitHub data: commit activity over 91 days (35 points), the trend against the same period last year (20), how recent the last commit is (15), how recent the last release is (10) and merged pull requests (20). Archived projects score 0; a maintenance notice caps the score at 25. It measures maintenance signals only, not code quality or security.
Visitor rating
Have you used Chroma? Rate it:
Ratings come from visitors, not from EvalAITools, and are not part of the health status above. One rating per visitor per tool every 30 days.
Daily snapshots
| Date (UTC) | Stars | Commits, last 91 days | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct 2026 | 29,521 | 115 | Slowing down |
| 17 Oct 2026 | 29,512 | 119 | Slowing down |
| 16 Oct 2026 | 29,512 | 121 | Slowing down |
One snapshot is stored per day, starting 16 October 2026. No status change has been recorded for Chroma since then.
Other vector databases
| Tool | Status | Stars | Commits (91d) | vs last year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meilisearch | Active | 59.6k | 353 | −37% |
| Milvus | Active | 46.4k | 651 | +18% |
| Faiss | Active | 41.2k | 164 | +59% |
| Qdrant | Active | 35.1k | 709 | +104% |
| Chroma | Slowing down | 29.5k | 115 | −66% |
| Typesense | Slowing down | 27.0k | 31 | −62% |
| pgvector | Active | 23.4k | 118 | +269% |
| Weaviate | Active | 16.9k | 3,561 | +143% |
| LanceDB | Active | 11.7k | 482 | +219% |
| sqlite-vec | No recent commits | 8.2k | 0 | — |
| Vespa | Active | 7.1k | 1,835 | +28% |
| Marqo | No recent commits | 5.0k | 0 | −100% |
| pgvecto.rs | No recent commits | 2.2k | 0 | — |
Alternatives to Chroma
Open-source alternatives to Chroma, ranked by live maintenance data →
Compare
Status badge
Show Chroma’s live maintenance status in a README. The badge updates with this page and links back to it.
[](https://evalaitools.com/tools/chroma/)Read next
How this is measured: commits on the repository’s default branch counted through the GitHub API, the last 91 days against the same 91 days a year earlier; archived flag and licence from the repository; README checked daily for maintenance notices. Commit counts measure activity, not quality, and we have not tested this tool ourselves for this page.