Chroma Cloud stops accepting writes on November 22, 2026 and stops serving reads on December 22, 2026. Open-source Chroma is not affected.
You have three options: self-host open-source Chroma, move to another managed vector database, or move to a search engine like TopK. Whichever you pick, export your data before December 22, because after that it can no longer be read.
What exactly is changing?
Chroma announced it is joining Replit and is winding down its hosted service. The official timeline has two dates:
| Date | What stops | What you need done |
|---|---|---|
| November 22, 2026 | Writes. Chroma Cloud becomes read-only | Your app writes somewhere else |
| December 22, 2026 | Reads. Queries and exports stop | Data exported, app switched, credentials rotated |
The first date matters most. If your app still adds or updates records, it starts failing on November 22, a month before reads stop.
What are the options?
| Self-host open-source Chroma | Another managed vector database | TopK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code changes | Swap CloudClient for HttpClient | Rewrite queries and filters | Rewrite queries, usually a few lines each |
| Who runs it | You | The vendor | TopK, or in your own cloud account |
| Re-embedding | No | Depends on the vendor | No |
where_document filters | Yes | Often no equivalent | Yes, plus regex |
| Search | Vector, with unranked text filters | Varies | True hybrid: keyword, vector and semantic in one pass |
Self-host if you want zero query changes and are happy running a database. Open-source Chroma stays under Apache 2.0.
Move to a managed service if you never want to run infrastructure. Check how your filters and text queries map before you commit, because that is where most rewrites hide.
Move to TopK if search quality matters as much as the move itself. Your embeddings, metadata and distance metric carry over, and you get hybrid search and native filtering without tuning anything. See the Chroma to TopK comparison.
How do you migrate without downtime?
Export
before Dec 22
Import
into the new store
Validate
counts and overlap
Switch writes
before Nov 22
Switch reads
- Export every collection with its embeddings, documents and metadata.
- Import into the new database. For TopK, the migration guide does this with one script and
topk import. - Rewrite queries, mapping each Chroma filter and any text queries.
- Validate record counts and search overlap while Chroma still answers reads.
- Switch writes before November 22, then reads.
If you use a coding agent, one prompt can do steps 1, 2 and 4: "Migrate my Chroma collections to TopK: docs.topk.io/migrate-chroma". The agent guide only reads from Chroma and asks before importing anything.
What if you miss the deadline?
After December 22, Chroma Cloud serves no reads, so the stored embeddings are gone. You can still rebuild if you have the source documents: re-embed them with the same model and load them into the new database. If your source of truth lived only in Chroma, export now.
Need help moving?
TopK engineers will plan and check the migration with you, and teams moving from Chroma get their first 3 months free, up to $1,000. Book a migration call.