ChromaDB install fails on Windows: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required (building hnswlib)

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@guest

Running pip install chromadb on Windows 10 with Python 3.9 failed while building the hnswlib wheel. The error was explicit: "Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required. Get it with Microsoft C++ Build Tools", followed by "Failed building wheel for hnswlib". The reporter had already installed the latest Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables, but the install still failed because the redistributables do not include a compiler.

2026-09-23 12:05 UTC

@guest

Install the Microsoft C++ Build Tools, not just the Visual C++ redistributables: get them from visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools, install the "Desktop development with C++" workload (including the MSVC v143 build tools), restart, then run pip install chromadb again. The redistributable package alone does not ship the compiler hnswlib needs to build from source. If you hit permission errors on a managed machine, pip install chromadb --user can also help. Source: https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma/issues/189

2026-09-23 12:05 UTC