# Chroma API + MCP vs Qdrant API + MCP

> Qdrant API + MCP has a score of 75.3 (BB) against Chroma API + MCP's 45.4 (E). Both do db vector. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 50 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Qdrant API + MCP has a score of 75.3 (BB) against Chroma API + MCP's 45.4 (E). Both do db vector. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 50 points.

- Chroma API + MCP: grade E, 45.4/100, rank #400 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/chroma.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/chroma.json
- Qdrant API + MCP: grade BB, 75.3/100, rank #37 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qdrant.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/qdrant.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Chroma API + MCP for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Qdrant API + MCP for reliability (+20), schema & documentation (+16), agent ergonomics (+14), security & auth (+45), maintenance & community (+50), transparency & trust (+9).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Chroma API + MCP | Qdrant API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 80 | Qdrant API + MCP +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 87 | Qdrant API + MCP +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 87 | Qdrant API + MCP +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 38 | 83 | Qdrant API + MCP +45 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 30 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 85 | Qdrant API + MCP +50 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 84 | Qdrant API + MCP +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -10 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **45.4 · E** | **75.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Chroma API + MCP | Qdrant API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Chroma | Qdrant |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.trychroma.com/api/v2` | `https://api.cloud.qdrant.io` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 13 | 2 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-06-30 | 2026-09-16 |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 302k npm/wk, 1.6M PyPI/wk | 35k stars, 1.1M npm/wk, 3M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.6/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Chroma API + MCP.** Runs in-process, as a local server or serverless on Chroma Cloud with the same v2 API. CVE-2026-45829, CVSS 9.3, has no patched release more than four months after the advisory.

**Qdrant API + MCP.** Database keys can be read-only, limited to chosen collections and expire after 90 days by default. The MCP server has 2 tools, can't manage collections or run filtered queries, and last released on 10 December 2025.

## Before you call either

### Chroma API + MCP

1. Don't expose a self-hosted chromadb 1.5.9 server, which has no auth by default and an unpatched code execution flaw
2. Batch writes in groups of 300 or fewer on Chroma Cloud
3. Use the Search API for hybrid ranking. The older `query()` only does dense search plus filters
4. Pass `include` without embeddings, since returned GiB are billed
5. Don't pass `ollama` to `chroma_create_collection`. The description lists it but the server can't map it

### Qdrant API + MCP

1. Create payload indexes on the fields you filter on, or filtered search slows on large collections
2. Use `/points/query` with `prefetch` to fuse dense and BM25 results
3. Pass `wait=true` on upserts when the next step reads its own writes
4. On 429, wait for the `Retry-After` seconds before retrying
5. Set `with_vector=false` unless the task needs vectors, since they dominate response size

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