Pinecone
Managed vector database with a free Starter tier, hybrid dense/sparse search, and usage-based Standard plans.
- Vector databases
- Yes
- Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.
- Starter plan is limited to us-east-1. Standard and Enterprise plans support all available regions across AWS, Azure and GCP.
Who it suits.
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 if…
Cost predictability at small scale matters more than managed convenience — the $50/month Standard minimum applies before any pay-as-you-go usage starts.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
What the documentation says.
Each value below links to the page it was read from, with the sentence it came from. Criteria Pinecone does not publish are not listed.
Pricing
Free tier
Yes
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pinecone Pricing ↗
“Starter: Up to 2 GB storage, Up to 1M/mo read units, Up to 2M/mo write units.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Entry paid plan
Builder plan: $20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. Standard plan is usage-based with a $50/month minimum.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pinecone Pricing ↗
“$20/month flat, for solo developers and small teams. You'll be charged a minimum of $50/month [on Standard]. Once your usage exceeds this amount, you'll pay as you go.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Pricing model
Usage-based on the Standard plan, with a $50/month minimum before pay-as-you-go charges apply.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- 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
Infrastructure
Regions
Starter plan is limited to us-east-1. Standard and Enterprise plans support all available regions across AWS, Azure and GCP.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pinecone Pricing ↗
“Starter: us-east-1. Standard/Enterprise: All available regions — AWS, Azure, GCP.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
Vector
Hybrid search (vector + keyword)
Supported — combine a keyword signal (BM25 or sparse) with a dense signal at query time, often with reranking.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Pinecone documentation ↗
“To get the best of both, use hybrid search — combine a keyword signal (BM25 or sparse) with a dense signal at query time, often with reranking.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official docs
Metadata filtering
Supported — Pinecone indexes metadata so a query can include a metadata filter to limit the search.
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- 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
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.