Hachi vs TwelveLabs

Hachi

A genuinely private alternative to cloud photo search: the index and the queries never leave your machine, and the code is auditable under AGPLv3. The trade-off is that you are the sysadmin — x86_64 hardware, a local install, no mobile client, no hosted fallback. The commercial side looks half-abandoned even though the code is not.

Pros

• +Natural-language queries run across both video and image indexes locally
• +Face recognition groups people across the indexed library
• +Source is published on GitHub under AGPLv3 and was still being committed to in December 2025
• +Runs fully offline, so no media or query text leaves the machine

Cons

• −Requires x86_64 hardware and a manual self-host; there is no hosted option
• −The Gumroad link for the paid build 404s, so the commercial tier is effectively unavailable
• −The marketing page still carries a 2022 copyright and names no legal entity or country

TwelveLabs

Still the most direct way to add real video search and Q&A to a product without training multimodal models yourself. Pricing has moved from per-minute metering to plans that bundle storage with a monthly workload allowance, which makes a prototype's cost predictable, but a large archive outgrows Plus quickly and only Pro can buy overage.

Pros

• +Purpose-built video models rather than frame-sampled image models
• +A free plan and self-serve $29 and $99 tiers make prototype costs predictable
• +Re-indexing for new model releases is included in the monthly fee
• +SDKs and a playground support evaluation before committing
• +Analyze handles continuous reasoning over long footage

Cons

• −Storage and workload allowances are separate, and Free and Plus stop at their caps with no overage
• −It is infrastructure, not a turnkey app - integration takes engineering
• −Large archives push quickly into Pro overage or an enterprise contract

Is Hachi cheaper than TwelveLabs?

TwelveLabs starts at $29/mo. Hachi has a free tier; what its paid plans cost is not confirmed by us yet.

Does Hachi or TwelveLabs have a free tier?

Both: Hachi has a free tier, and TwelveLabs has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Hachi or TwelveLabs?

TwelveLabs ships a public API, as of our last verification. A public API for Hachi is not confirmed by us — check its developer docs before you plan an integration.