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Pinecone vs Weaviate

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Pinecone and Weaviate 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 Weaviate if…

Teams that want hybrid search included on every tier without an add-on, or that want an always-free cluster (not a time-limited trial) to build against before committing to a paid plan.

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.
  • Weaviate: Predictable flat pricing matters more than granular control — per-dimension consumption billing means cost scales with embedding choices in a way a flat per-month plan doesn't.

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

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

Visit Pinecone documentationVisit Weaviate 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.

CriterionPineconeWeaviate
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.One fully managed cluster per user, free forever and with no credit card, upgradable to paid at any time.
Entry paid plan
Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.
Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.
Pricing modelUsage-based on the Standard plan, with a $50/month minimum before pay-as-you-go charges apply.Consumption-based, charged on total vector dimensions stored plus storage, backups and optional AI services. Flex pricing starts around $0.00465 per 1M dimensions.
Infrastructure
RegionsStarter is AWS us-east-1 only. Builder, Standard and Enterprise get all available regions across AWS, Azure and GCP.Free: AWS, 2 regions. Flex and Premium shared: GCP and AWS, 7 regions. Premium dedicated: GCP, AWS and Azure, roughly 40 regions.
Uptime SLA
99.95%, listed only against Enterprise (from $500/month minimum usage). Starter, Builder and Standard publish no uptime SLA.
Best effort on Free; 99.5% on Flex; 99.9% on Premium shared; 99.95% on Premium dedicated.
Vector
Max vector dimensionsUp to 20000 dimensions per dense vector field (minimum 1), per the create-index schema in API version 2026-07.65,535 dimensions maximum per embedding vector in Weaviate Database, because the embedding is stored using uint16. Stated for Weaviate Database generally; the FAQ gives no separate Weaviate Cloud cap.
Similarity metrics supportedcosine, dotproduct or euclidean, chosen per dense vector field when the index is created.cosine (the default), dot, l2-squared, hamming and manhattan, set per vector index in vectorIndexConfig; the HFresh index supports only cosine and l2-squared.
Hybrid search (vector + keyword)Supported — combine a keyword signal (BM25 or sparse) with a dense signal at query time, often with reranking.Supported across all plans.
Metadata filteringSupported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search.Filtered vector search combines vector search with structured, scalar filters, implemented as pre-filtering rather than post-filtering.
Support
Support on entry paid planCommunity support via Discord on Starter; free support on Builder, the entry paid plan.Email support on every tier including Free. Phone and Slack support start at Premium; a technical account team is an add-on there.
Response time commitmentNot included on any plan: response SLAs are sold separately as a Developer or Pro support add-on.Severity 1: none on Free, one business day on Flex, 4 hours on Premium shared, 1 hour on Premium dedicated. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type II, audited annually, covering security, availability and confidentiality controls.SOC 2 Type II, independently audited via Drata; Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited and the report is in the trust portal.
ISO 27001ISO 27001:2022 certified; annual surveillance audit completed and certification reported as fully active. From the Trust Center updates feed, posted April 1, 2026.ISMS certified against ISO 27001, stated in the technical and organisational measures of the Data Processing Agreement.
HIPAAHIPAA: BAA available on request for covered entities and business associates.HIPAA compliant on Enterprise Cloud (AWS); in the plan comparison table HIPAA is marked available only on the Premium dedicated column.
GDPR / data residencyGDPR: data processing agreements, EU data residency and right-to-erasure support.DPA: customer-selected cloud provider and hosting region are not changed without written consent; EEA transfers rely on EU standard contractual clauses.
Encryption at restStored data encrypted with the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256).AES-256 or equivalent at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit; keys managed in cloud-provider KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Customer-managed keysCMEK using keys you manage in AWS KMS on Pinecone-managed projects; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.Encrypted volumes with customer keys listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared. Plan table columns are Free, Flex, Premium shared, Premium dedicated.
Role-based access controlRole-based access control over users, service accounts and API keys; roles managed in the console or via the Admin API.RBAC included on every Weaviate Cloud plan including Free; SSO/SAML only from Premium upward.
Private networking / VPCPrivate Endpoints via AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link, up to 10 per project; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.PrivateLink (AWS) listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared.
Dedicated infrastructureDedicated reserved-compute deployment, plus BYOC: a privately managed Pinecone region inside your own AWS, Azure or Google Cloud account.Dedicated Cloud is a managed deployment on single-tenant infrastructure with no noisy neighbors, offered as the Premium plan's dedicated option.

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
Weaviate
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

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “free forever $0 /mo no credit card required a fully managed ai database to explore weaviate features.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · 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.
Weaviate
One fully managed cluster per user, free forever and with no credit card, upgradable to paid at any time.
Sources (2) →

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.
Weaviate
Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.
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

  • Weaviate Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Flex: Starts at $45/mo. Pay-as-you-go, monthly, no commitment.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · 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.
Weaviate
Consumption-based, charged on total vector dimensions stored plus storage, backups and optional AI services. Flex pricing starts around $0.00465 per 1M dimensions.
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

  • Weaviate Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Why is pricing based on the total number of vector dimensions? [...] You are also billed for persistent and backup storage of objects and their embeddings. [...] Vector dimensions Free from $0.00465 / 1M”

    Read 2026-09-13 · 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.
Weaviate
Free: AWS, 2 regions. Flex and Premium shared: GCP and AWS, 7 regions. Premium dedicated: GCP, AWS and Azure, roughly 40 regions.
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

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “Cloud availability Cloud service provider AWS GCP, AWS GCP, AWS GCP, AWS, Azure Regions Limited (2) Limited (7) Limited (7) All (~40)”

    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.
Weaviate
Best effort on Free; 99.5% on Flex; 99.9% on Premium shared; 99.95% on Premium dedicated.
Sources (2) →

Max vector dimensions

Pinecone
Up to 20000 dimensions per dense vector field (minimum 1), per the create-index schema in API version 2026-07.
Weaviate
65,535 dimensions maximum per embedding vector in Weaviate Database, because the embedding is stored using uint16. Stated for Weaviate Database generally; the FAQ gives no separate Weaviate Cloud cap.
Sources (2) →

Similarity metrics supported

Pinecone
cosine, dotproduct or euclidean, chosen per dense vector field when the index is created.
Weaviate
cosine (the default), dot, l2-squared, hamming and manhattan, set per vector index in vectorIndexConfig; the HFresh index supports only cosine and l2-squared.
Sources (2) →

Metadata filtering

Pinecone
Supported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search.
Weaviate
Filtered vector search combines vector search with structured, scalar filters, implemented as pre-filtering rather than post-filtering.
Sources (2) →

Support on entry paid plan

Pinecone
Community support via Discord on Starter; free support on Builder, the entry paid plan.
Weaviate
Email support on every tier including Free. Phone and Slack support start at Premium; a technical account team is an add-on there.
Sources (2) →
  • Pinecone Pricing ↗

    “Community Support via Discord [...] Prometheus and Datadog monitoring Includes Free support Response SLAs available via Developer or Pro support add-on”

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

  • Weaviate Pricing ↗

    “Support / onboarding Email support ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Phone support × × ✓ ✓ Slack support × × ✓ ✓ Technical account team × × add-on add-on”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · 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.
Weaviate
Severity 1: none on Free, one business day on Flex, 4 hours on Premium shared, 1 hour on Premium dedicated. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
Sources (2) →

SOC 2

Pinecone
SOC 2 Type II, audited annually, covering security, availability and confidentiality controls.
Weaviate
SOC 2 Type II, independently audited via Drata; Weaviate Cloud is SOC 2 audited and the report is in the trust portal.
Sources (2) →

ISO 27001

Pinecone
ISO 27001:2022 certified; annual surveillance audit completed and certification reported as fully active. From the Trust Center updates feed, posted April 1, 2026.
Weaviate
ISMS certified against ISO 27001, stated in the technical and organisational measures of the Data Processing Agreement.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Pinecone
HIPAA: BAA available on request for covered entities and business associates.
Weaviate
HIPAA compliant on Enterprise Cloud (AWS); in the plan comparison table HIPAA is marked available only on the Premium dedicated column.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Pinecone
GDPR: data processing agreements, EU data residency and right-to-erasure support.
Weaviate
DPA: customer-selected cloud provider and hosting region are not changed without written consent; EEA transfers rely on EU standard contractual clauses.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Pinecone
Stored data encrypted with the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256).
Weaviate
AES-256 or equivalent at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit; keys managed in cloud-provider KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Sources (2) →

Customer-managed keys

Pinecone
CMEK using keys you manage in AWS KMS on Pinecone-managed projects; requires a Pinecone Enterprise plan.
Weaviate
Encrypted volumes with customer keys listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared. Plan table columns are Free, Flex, Premium shared, Premium dedicated.
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.
Weaviate
RBAC included on every Weaviate Cloud plan including Free; SSO/SAML only from Premium upward.
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.
Weaviate
PrivateLink (AWS) listed only for the Premium dedicated plan; not available on Free, Flex or Premium shared.
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.
Weaviate
Dedicated Cloud is a managed deployment on single-tenant infrastructure with no noisy neighbors, offered as the Premium plan's dedicated option.
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.

Credit card to startWeaviate: No
When the free offer endsWeaviate: Never — the Engram tier is billed $0/mo, free forever.
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 Weaviate?

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

Weaviate: Flex tier starts at $45/month, pay-as-you-go, no commitment.

Should I choose Pinecone or Weaviate?

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 Weaviate if Teams that want hybrid search included on every tier without an add-on, or that want an always-free cluster (not a time-limited trial) to build against before committing to a paid plan.

Provider pages

PineconeManaged vector database with a free Starter tier, hybrid dense/sparse search, and usage-based Standard plans.WeaviateOpen-source vector database with an always-free cluster tier and hybrid search included on every plan.

Related comparisons

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.