Is Vercel incompatible with ChromaDB ? (sqlite)

[flavienbwk]

Hi there,

I’m trying to build a simple app/api service where I got my inspiration from nextjs-fastapi/package.json at main · digitros/nextjs-fastapi · GitHub for packaging to Vercel.

Here are my requirements.txt :

fastapi==0.112.2
langchain==0.2.14
chromadb==0.5.3
langchain_chroma==0.1.3
langchain_community==0.2.12
langchain_openai==0.1.22
unstructured[md]~=0.15.7
pydantic==2.8.2
python-dotenv==1.0.1
uvicorn==0.30.6

But when I run my API, I get this error :

[1]     import chromadb
[1]   File "/python312/lib/python3.12/site-packages/chromadb/__init__.py", line 72, in <module>
[1]     import sqlite3
[1]   File "/python312/lib/python3.12/sqlite3/__init__.py", line 57, in <module>
[1]     from sqlite3.dbapi2 import *
[1]   File "/python312/lib/python3.12/sqlite3/dbapi2.py", line 27, in <module>
[1]     from _sqlite3 import *
[1] ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_sqlite3'

Even when adding pysqlite3-binary==0.5.3.post1, it doesn’t work. It looks like Vercel is incompatible with SQLite, making ChromaDB apps incompatible.

This is a problem as ChromaDB is the leading technology in LLM apps. Vercel leadership should care in these AI times. Is there something planned to bring this compatibility ?

Also: the 250MB limit makes it very hard to deploy any Python-backed apps as requirements.txt are often large.

Thx.

[amyegan]

Hi @flavienbwk. As you already discovered, SQLite can’t be used with Vercel. We recommend using other storage solutions like Vercel Postgres or an external database.

You can find a list of compatible database options in the Vercel Marketplace.