# Redis Cloud vs Pinecone

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/redis-cloud-vs-pinecone/

Every value below is read from Redis Cloud's and Pinecone's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Redis Cloud | Pinecone |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | Essentials: from $0.007/hour, $5/month total. 250 MB-100 GB RAM and SSD, single DB. | Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum. |
| Pricing model | On-demand hourly billing. Data transfer is included in the price, with limits. | Usage-based on the Standard plan, with a $50/month minimum before pay-as-you-go charges apply. |
| Metadata filtering | Supported — a vector KNN query can be combined with a pre-filter on other indexed fields in the same query. | Supported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Redis Cloud: Essentials: from $0.007/hour, $5/month total. 250 MB-100 GB RAM and SSD, single DB. ([source](https://redis.io/pricing/))
- Pinecone: Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum. ([source](https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/))

### Pricing model

- Redis Cloud: On-demand hourly billing. Data transfer is included in the price, with limits. ([source](https://redis.io/pricing/))
- Pinecone: Usage-based on the Standard plan, with a $50/month minimum before pay-as-you-go charges apply. ([source](https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/))

### Metadata filtering

- Redis Cloud: Supported — a vector KNN query can be combined with a pre-filter on other indexed fields in the same query. ([source](https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/ai/search-and-query/query/vector-search/))
- Pinecone: Supported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search. ([source](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/indexes/understanding-indexes))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Redis Cloud if Teams that want Redis from the company that maintains it, with an on-demand hourly Essentials tier cheap enough to run a small production workload without committing to a fixed plan.

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.

Consider something else: Redis Cloud — Multi-region active-active replication is needed on a small budget — that's a Pro-tier feature here, where a serverless competitor may price per-region replication into a lower-cost plan.

Consider something else: 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.

## Documented by only one

- Regions: Pinecone: Starter plan is limited to us-east-1. Standard and Enterprise plans support all available regions across AWS, Azure and GCP.
- Multi-region replication: Redis Cloud: Not available on Free or Essentials. The Pro plan adds active-active (multi-region) replication and private connectivity.
- Similarity metrics supported: Redis Cloud: Cosine similarity is documented as a supported distance metric in Redis's vector field schema (DISTANCE_METRIC: COSINE in example code); other metrics were not confirmed in what is sourced here.
- Hybrid search (vector + keyword): Pinecone: Supported — combine a keyword signal (BM25 or sparse) with a dense signal at query time, often with reranking.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Redis Cloud or Pinecone?**

Redis Cloud: Essentials: from $0.007/hour, $5/month total. 250 MB-100 GB RAM and SSD, single DB.
Pinecone: Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.

**Should I choose Redis Cloud or Pinecone?**

Pick Redis Cloud if Teams that want Redis from the company that maintains it, with an on-demand hourly Essentials tier cheap enough to run a small production workload without committing to a fixed plan.
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.