# Chroma API + MCP vs Weaviate API + MCP

> Weaviate API + MCP has a score of 68.2 (B) against Chroma API + MCP's 45.4 (E). Both do db vector. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 55 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/chroma-vs-weaviate
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/chroma-vs-weaviate.md (~1,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/chroma-vs-weaviate.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/chroma-vs-weaviate.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Weaviate API + MCP has a score of 68.2 (B) against Chroma API + MCP's 45.4 (E). Both do db vector. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 55 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
- Weaviate API + MCP: grade B, 68.2/100, rank #131 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/weaviate.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/weaviate.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Chroma API + MCP for reliability (+25).

Pick Weaviate API + MCP for schema & documentation (+11), agent ergonomics (+19), security & auth (+41), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+55).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Chroma API + MCP | Weaviate API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 35 | Chroma API + MCP +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 82 | Weaviate API + MCP +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 92 | Weaviate API + MCP +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 38 | 79 | Weaviate API + MCP +41 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | Weaviate API + MCP +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 90 | Weaviate API + MCP +55 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 71 | Chroma API + MCP +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -10 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **45.4 · E** | **68.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Chroma API + MCP | Weaviate API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Chroma | Weaviate |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.trychroma.com/api/v2` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause (some parts under the Weaviate License) |
| Tools exposed | 13 | 4 |
| 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 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 302k npm/wk, 1.6M PyPI/wk | 17k stars, 406k npm/wk, 2.3M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## 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.

**Weaviate API + MCP.** Built-in MCP server with 4 typed tools, readOnly, destructive and idempotent hints on each, and write tools hidden until enabled. No public status page or incident history.

## 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

### Weaviate API + MCP

1. Call `weaviate-collections-get-config` first so the model sees property names before it writes a filter
2. `weaviate-query-hybrid` defaults `alpha` to 0.75, so lower it for keyword-heavy queries
3. Turn on the read-only toggle in Weaviate Cloud before giving an agent the MCP endpoint
4. Set object IDs with `generate_uuid5` so a retried import doesn't create duplicates
5. Free clusters hold one collection. Use tenants rather than extra collections

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