Chroma 1.5.9 or VecturaDB on one Compute Engine VM, with HTTPS, from an Open in Cloud Shell button and a guide. The server and its data stay in your Google Cloud project, Google bills you directly, and the template is open source.
For a server in use every day.
Estimated Google Cloud cost
12.98 USD a month on your Google Cloud bill
e2-micro with its disks and external IP, whatever the use.
The template is free and open source (Apache 2.0). You pay only Google Cloud, which bills you directly: no fee from us.
Cost: an estimate with the Google Cloud list prices of europe-west1 in USD, on 4 November 2026, without the snapshots of the backups. The details are on the page of the template.
The button opens Cloud Shell, the terminal of your Google Cloud console, with the template and a guide on the side. Google asks to confirm the clone of the repository: without “Trust repo”, Cloud Shell is temporary, and the guide signs you in.
Choose the project, then run the commands of the guide: they install Terraform, keep its state in a bucket of your project, ask the IP address that may connect, and create everything. In our tests the server answered over HTTPS in 6 to 11 minutes.
The url output is the address of your server, over HTTPS. The Chroma clients connect to it.
import chromadb
client = chromadb.HttpClient(host="<the host in url>", port=443, ssl=True)Python, chromadb 1.5.9: the connection we ran against the template. VecturaDB with an API key also needs headers={"x-chroma-token": "<your key>"}.
Disclaimer. The templates and their scripts are provided as is, without warranty of any kind, as stated in the Apache License 2.0. The numbers on this page are what we measured on 5 November 2026 in europe-west1: your region, sizes, data and versions may behave differently. You are responsible for your data: back it up, and test a restore on a copy before you rely on it.
Not sure about your case? Open an issue in the VecturaDB repository, describe your data and your setup, and we will take a look on a best-effort basis.
VecturaDB is an independent fork of Chroma, under the Apache License 2.0. The original code is copyright Chroma Inc. and its contributors. Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Chroma Inc. CHROMA is a registered trademark of Chroma Inc., used here only to describe compatibility.