Pinecone
Run vector search, embeddings, reranking, and RAG assistants as a managed service.
At a Glance
Pinecone is an AI tool for Databases, vector search & SQL (category: Development & Code). Free access: Free plan. Paid from $20 (Builder). Documented: 4 plans with prices and limits.
- Category
- Databases, vector search & SQL
- Paid from
- $20 / Month (Builder)
- Free Option
- Free plan
- Plans
- 4
- Sources
- 3 verified sources
Category: Development & Code · Databases, vector search & SQL
Features
Pinecone is a serverless vector database for AI applications, RAG pipelines, and real-time retrieval. Hybrid and semantic search, namespaces, Pinecone Assistant, and sparse and dense vectors are supported.
Starter is free with 2 GB, 5 million vectors, and unlimited queries. Standard charges usage-based on read units, write units, and stored vectors. CMEK and PrivateLink are available in higher tiers.
- Serverless vector database for real-time retrieval in AI applications and RAG pipelines
- Free Starter account: 2 GB storage, 5 million vectors, unlimited queries
- Hybrid and semantic search with multi-tenant isolation
- Pinecone Assistant for RAG-backed document queries without your own stack
- Namespaces for multi-tenant isolation within an index
- EU server region selectable on demand
Prices and plans
| Tier | Price | Period | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | free | Month | Up to 2 GB storage 2M write units and 1M read units/month Up to 5 indexes Assistant: 1 GB, 500,000 input and 300,000 output tokens/month 5M embedding tokens and 500 reranking requests/month |
| Builder | $20 | Month | Flat price with no usage overages Higher limits than Starter Cloud and region selection Multiple projects and users Assistant up to 3 GB, 2M input and 1M output tokens/month |
| Standard | $50 | Month | Pay as you go above a $50 minimum 21-day trial with $300 credits Unlimited read/write units at usage rates Assistant input $8 and output $15 per million tokens RBAC, SSO, backup, and restore |
| Enterprise | $500 | Month/Contract | Pay as you go above a $500 minimum 99.95% uptime SLA Private endpoints and customer-managed keys Audit logs, SCIM, and Pro support Optional BYOC |
Prices per vendor, excl. taxes/VAT where applicable.
Limits
Pinecone publishes illustrative, non-binding Starter workloads: about 44,000 recommendations/day for 50,000 products, 15,000 semantic searches/day for roughly 30,000 documents, or 130,000 category-scoped forum chats/day. These exclude inference, Assistant, and initial import. The stronger comparison units are therefore 2 GB, 1M read units, and 2M write units. Standard and Enterprise bill usage above their minimum spend.
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FAQ
Is Pinecone available for free?
Yes. A permanently free plan is published, not a time-limited trial. 2 GB, 1M reads and 2M writes/month. Illustrative example around 15,000 semantic searches/day.
Where is the vendor of Pinecone based?
Pinecone Systems, Inc. is based in the USA. Regardless of that location, data processing and privacy terms are governed by the vendor's own contract.
How is Pinecone billed?
Builder costs a flat $20, Standard at least $50 and Enterprise at least $500 per month. Starter includes specific database, inference and assistant allowances. Pinecone shows prices exclusively in US dollars, with no currency or country switch.
How much does Pinecone cost?
The cheapest paid plan of Pinecone is Builder at $20. 4 plans are documented in total, each with its price and limits.
Is Pinecone currently available?
Pinecone is still active: Starter, Builder, Standard, and Enterprise access.
How we compare
We compare free access, paid entry, plan limits, features and the listed official sources. Unsourced figures stay marked as not published.
Only confirmed entries appear in the catalog. Prices, plans and limits come from listed official vendor pages. Missing figures stay marked as not published. Search results are ordered by Task match by default; category and task lists are alphabetical. Both can be switched to Free access first; neither is a quality ranking. The vendor page always wins.
Edited and checked by the AI Compare Ninja team
Sources
All details regarding plans, limits, and features are based on official vendor documentation and the primary sources verified below.
- https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/
- https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/manage-cost/understanding-cost
- https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/assistant/pricing-and-limits
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