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Pinecone vs Qdrant

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Pinecone and Qdrant built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 25 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Pinecone if…

Teams that want a fully managed vector search product with hybrid search and metadata filtering built in, and don't want to operate the underlying index themselves.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Qdrant if…

Teams that want a choice of similarity metric rather than one fixed default, or that want the option to self-host the same open-source engine the managed cloud runs.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Pinecone: Cost predictability at small scale matters more than managed convenience — the $50/month Standard minimum applies before any pay-as-you-go usage starts.
  • Qdrant: A published, calculator-free entry price matters — Qdrant Cloud's Standard tier pricing is usage-based with no static per-month figure quoted, unlike some competitors' flat entry plans.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Pinecone alternatives · Qdrant alternatives

19 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Pinecone documentationVisit Qdrant documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionPineconeQdrant
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree tierAlways free
What the free plan includesA first index at no charge, then pay-as-you-go. Pinecone no longer publishes the Starter tier's storage and unit limits on this page.A single-node cluster with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB disk, free forever, without high availability.
Entry paid planBuilder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.Smallest paid Managed Cloud cluster (1 node, 0.5 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk) on AWS us-east-1: $0.03566/hour, about $26.10/month, per Qdrant's own Cloud pricing calculator. Calculator estimate for AWS us-east-1; VAT excluded and expressly not a binding offer.
Pricing modelUsage-based on the Standard plan, with a $50/month minimum before pay-as-you-go charges apply.Usage-based on the Standard tier: billed for compute (vCPU), memory (GB) and storage (GB) consumed by clusters, backup storage, and inference tokens for paid models.
Infrastructure
RegionsStarter is AWS us-east-1 only. Builder, Standard and Enterprise get all available regions across AWS, Azure and GCP.Standard and Premium tiers run on AWS, Azure and GCP.
Uptime SLA
99.95%, listed only against Enterprise (from $500/month minimum usage). Starter, Builder and Standard publish no uptime SLA.
99.5% on the paid cloud tier; 99.9% on Premium.
Vector
Max vector dimensionsUp to 20000 dimensions per dense vector field (minimum 1), per the create-index schema in API version 2026-07.Up to 65,535 dimensions for dense vectors
Similarity metrics supportedcosine, dotproduct or euclidean, chosen per dense vector field when the index is created.Dot product, Cosine similarity (implemented as dot-product over automatically normalized vectors), Euclidean distance and Manhattan distance.
Hybrid search (vector + keyword)Supported — combine a keyword signal (BM25 or sparse) with a dense signal at query time, often with reranking.Native hybrid queries combine dense semantic and sparse lexical (BM25) vectors in a single query
Metadata filteringSupported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search.Supported: conditions can be set on the payload and on the point id, combined with AND, OR and NOT clauses that nest arbitrarily.
Support
Response time commitmentNot included on any plan: response SLAs are sold separately as a Developer or Pro support add-on.Published as best effort, 10x5 and 24x7. The comparison table prints three response values against four support levels, so which tier gets which cannot be read off this page.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type II, audited annually, covering security, availability and confidentiality controls.SOC 2 Type 2 certified; compliance reports available on request through the Qdrant Trust Center.
HIPAAHIPAA: BAA available on request for covered entities and business associates.HIPAA certified; a Business Associate Agreement is available for Qdrant Managed Cloud.
GDPR / data residencyGDPR: data processing agreements, EU data residency and right-to-erasure support.DPA offered for GDPR; cluster data is stored only in the cluster's deployment region.
Encryption at restStored data encrypted with the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256).All storage volumes in Qdrant Managed Cloud are encrypted at rest; data in transit is protected with TLS.
Customer-managed keysCMEK using keys you manage in AWS KMS on Pinecone-managed projects; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.Premium tier customers can bring their own encryption keys for storage volumes.
Role-based access controlRole-based access control over users, service accounts and API keys; roles managed in the console or via the Admin API.Built-in RBAC in the Qdrant Cloud Management Console, with permissions manageable at collection level.
Private networking / VPCPrivate Endpoints via AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link, up to 10 per project; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.Private link connectivity from a Managed Cloud cluster to your VPC, available to Premium tier customers only.
Dedicated infrastructureDedicated reserved-compute deployment, plus BYOC: a privately managed Pinecone region inside your own AWS, Azure or Google Cloud account.Paid Managed Cloud clusters run on their own dedicated resources, isolated in hardened, unprivileged containers.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Kind of free offer

Pinecone
Free tier
Qdrant
Always free
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “Starter For trying out and for small applications. Start for Free Free [...] Database Storage Up to 2 GB Up to 10 GB Unlimited $0.33/GB/mo”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Qdrant Pricing ↗

    “Free Tier Free forever For testing, and prototypes Single Node Cluster 0.5 vCPU / 1GB RAM/ 4 GB Disk. Free Cloud Inference With Selected Models Start Free”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

What the free plan includes

Pinecone
A first index at no charge, then pay-as-you-go. Pinecone no longer publishes the Starter tier's storage and unit limits on this page.
Qdrant
A single-node cluster with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB disk, free forever, without high availability.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “Create your first index for free, then pay as you go when you're ready to scale.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Qdrant Pricing ↗

    “The free tier includes 1GB RAM and 4GB disk storage, upgrading will get you a dedicated cluster. [...] The free tier is ideal for testing, and prototypes being limited to 1GB RAM and 4GB disk without high availability.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Entry paid plan

Pinecone
Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.
Qdrant
Smallest paid Managed Cloud cluster (1 node, 0.5 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk) on AWS us-east-1: $0.03566/hour, about $26.10/month, per Qdrant's own Cloud pricing calculator. Calculator estimate for AWS us-east-1; VAT excluded and expressly not a binding offer.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “Builder NEW For solo developers and small teams. Get Started $20/month flat [...] Standard POPULAR For production applications at any scale. Start Free Trial $50/month min. usage You'll be charged a minimum of $50/month. Once your usage exceeds this amount, you'll pay as you go.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Qdrant Cloud · Calculator ↗

    “RAM: 2 GiB vCPUs: 0.5 vCPU Disk Space: 8 GiB Nodes: 1 Node [...] HOURLY: 0.03566 × 1 node = $0.03566/hour MONTHLY: 0.03566 × 24 hours × 30.5 days × 1 node = $26.10/month*”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

Pinecone
Usage-based on the Standard plan, with a $50/month minimum before pay-as-you-go charges apply.
Qdrant
Usage-based on the Standard tier: billed for compute (vCPU), memory (GB) and storage (GB) consumed by clusters, backup storage, and inference tokens for paid models.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “You'll be charged a minimum of $50/month. Once your usage exceeds this amount, you'll pay as you go.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Qdrant Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Billing is calculated based on actual resource usage during the billing period. You're charged for compute (vCPU), memory (GB), storage (GB) consumed by your clusters, storage (GB) consumed by backups, and used inference tokens of paid models.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Pinecone
Starter is AWS us-east-1 only. Builder, Standard and Enterprise get all available regions across AWS, Azure and GCP.
Qdrant
Standard and Premium tiers run on AWS, Azure and GCP.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “Cloud Availability AWS AWS, Azure, GCP AWS, Azure, GCP AWS, Azure, GCP Region Availability us-east-1 All available regions All available regions All available regions”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Qdrant Pricing ↗

    “Cloud Providers Depends on chosen infrastructure AWS, Azure, GCP AWS, Azure, GCP AWS, Azure, GCP Uptime SLA 99.5 Single AZ: 99.9, Multi AZ: 99.95”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Uptime SLA

Pinecone
99.95%, listed only against Enterprise (from $500/month minimum usage). Starter, Builder and Standard publish no uptime SLA.
Qdrant
99.5% on the paid cloud tier; 99.9% on Premium.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “everything in Standard 99.95% uptime SLA Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) Private Endpoints Customer Managed Encryption Keys”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Qdrant Pricing ↗

    “free tokens for paid inference models 99.5% uptime SLA [...] SSO private VPC links 99.9% uptime SLA extra support talk to our engineers”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Max vector dimensions

Pinecone
Up to 20000 dimensions per dense vector field (minimum 1), per the create-index schema in API version 2026-07.
Qdrant
Up to 65,535 dimensions for dense vectors
Sources (2) →

Similarity metrics supported

Pinecone
cosine, dotproduct or euclidean, chosen per dense vector field when the index is created.
Qdrant
Dot product, Cosine similarity (implemented as dot-product over automatically normalized vectors), Euclidean distance and Manhattan distance.
Sources (2) →

Metadata filtering

Pinecone
Supported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search.
Qdrant
Supported: conditions can be set on the payload and on the point id, combined with AND, OR and NOT clauses that nest arbitrarily.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone documentation ↗

    “Pinecone indexes metadata for filtering, so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Filtering — Qdrant Docs ↗

    “With Qdrant, you can set conditions when searching or retrieving points. For example, you can impose conditions on both the payload and the id of the point. [...] Qdrant allows you to combine conditions in clauses. Clauses are different logical operations, such as OR, AND, and NOT. Clauses can be recursively nested into each other so that you can reproduce an arbitrary boolean expression.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

Response time commitment

Pinecone
Not included on any plan: response SLAs are sold separately as a Developer or Pro support add-on.
Qdrant
Published as best effort, 10x5 and 24x7. The comparison table prints three response values against four support levels, so which tier gets which cannot be read off this page.
Sources (2) →

SOC 2

Pinecone
SOC 2 Type II, audited annually, covering security, availability and confidentiality controls.
Qdrant
SOC 2 Type 2 certified; compliance reports available on request through the Qdrant Trust Center.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Pinecone
HIPAA: BAA available on request for covered entities and business associates.
Qdrant
HIPAA certified; a Business Associate Agreement is available for Qdrant Managed Cloud.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Pinecone
GDPR: data processing agreements, EU data residency and right-to-erasure support.
Qdrant
DPA offered for GDPR; cluster data is stored only in the cluster's deployment region.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Pinecone
Stored data encrypted with the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256).
Qdrant
All storage volumes in Qdrant Managed Cloud are encrypted at rest; data in transit is protected with TLS.
Sources (2) →

Customer-managed keys

Pinecone
CMEK using keys you manage in AWS KMS on Pinecone-managed projects; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.
Qdrant
Premium tier customers can bring their own encryption keys for storage volumes.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Pinecone
Role-based access control over users, service accounts and API keys; roles managed in the console or via the Admin API.
Qdrant
Built-in RBAC in the Qdrant Cloud Management Console, with permissions manageable at collection level.
Sources (2) →

Private networking / VPC

Pinecone
Private Endpoints via AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link, up to 10 per project; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.
Qdrant
Private link connectivity from a Managed Cloud cluster to your VPC, available to Premium tier customers only.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Pinecone
Dedicated reserved-compute deployment, plus BYOC: a privately managed Pinecone region inside your own AWS, Azure or Google Cloud account.
Qdrant
Paid Managed Cloud clusters run on their own dedicated resources, isolated in hardened, unprivileged containers.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

When the free offer endsQdrant: Never — the free cluster is free forever.
Audit logsQdrant: Audit logging, available on paid clusters, captures operations performed through the Qdrant API, including user and API key attribution, timestamp, target collection, and result of the action.
Support on entry paid planPinecone: Community support via Discord on Starter; free support on Builder, the entry paid plan.
ISO 27001Pinecone: ISO 27001:2022 certified; annual surveillance audit completed and certification reported as fully active. From the Trust Center updates feed, posted April 1, 2026.
PCI DSSPinecone: Master Subscription Agreement forbids using the Services to process credit or debit card numbers, which it defines as Restricted Information. The only carve-out is HIPAA Information where an Order contemplates it and a BAA is executed.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Pinecone or Qdrant?

Pinecone: Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.

Qdrant: Smallest paid Managed Cloud cluster (1 node, 0.5 vCPU, 2 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk) on AWS us-east-1: $0.03566/hour, about $26.10/month, per Qdrant's own Cloud pricing calculator. Calculator estimate for AWS us-east-1; VAT excluded and expressly not a binding offer.

Should I choose Pinecone or Qdrant?

Pick Pinecone if Teams that want a fully managed vector search product with hybrid search and metadata filtering built in, and don't want to operate the underlying index themselves.

Pick Qdrant if Teams that want a choice of similarity metric rather than one fixed default, or that want the option to self-host the same open-source engine the managed cloud runs.

Provider pages

PineconeManaged vector database with a free Starter tier, hybrid dense/sparse search, and usage-based Standard plans.QdrantOpen-source vector database with a free-forever cloud tier and four selectable similarity metrics.

Related comparisons

Elastic Cloud vs PineconeElastic Cloud vs QdrantPinecone vs WeaviateQdrant vs WeaviateRedis Cloud vs PineconeRedis Cloud vs QdrantTurbopuffer vs PineconeTurbopuffer vs Qdrant

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.