Pinecone

Pinecone is a managed vector database for indexes, inference, and an assistant, not an unpriced ML toolkit. Rechecked 2026-08-17: pinecone.io/pricing sells Starter Free, Builder $20 / month flat, Standard $50 / month minimum usage (3-week trial with $300 credits), and Enterprise $500 / month minimum. Nexus is marked generally available on that page. Drop leftover copy that never printed a seat.

Compare Qdrant if you wanted open-source plus Cloud, Milvus if you wanted another OSS vector engine, and Supabase if you wanted Postgres with vectors as one feature.

Key Features

• Public plan matrix: Starter is for trying small apps (community Discord support). Builder is the new $20 flat row for solo/small teams. Standard is pay-as-you-go after a $50 minimum. Enterprise adds 99.95% SLA, BYOC, private endpoints, CMEK, audit logs.
• Usage beyond the seat: Standard/Enterprise meter Database On-Demand, Inference, and Assistant. The compare table lists storage from $0.33/GB/mo and write/read units that vary by cloud. Recheck the calculator.
• Not a 2024 algorithm zoo: Live products are dense/sparse/full-text indexes, inference, and assistant. Do not invent a one-stop deep-learning suite.
• BYOC is a sales row: Bring-your-own-cloud is contact pricing, outbound-only operations.

Use Cases

• People who will stay on Starter Free long enough to see the 2 GB / 2M write / 1M read caps.
• People who will pay Builder $20 for extra limits and multi-project.
• Teams that will accept a $50 or $500 monthly minimum.

Limitation: Starter example workloads on the page are illustrative, not quotes. We did not re-audit every region rate.

Pricing

pinecone.io/pricing on 2026-08-17.

If a leftover blog still says Pinecone has no public dollar table, treat this matrix as the source.

Getting Started

1. Open pinecone.io/pricing and start on Starter only long enough to see the caps.
2. Recheck Builder $20 before you jump to Standard's $50 minimum.
3. Recheck Qdrant if you wanted OSS plus a free Cloud node.
4. Do not paste the Starter example recs/day as a contract.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free plan?

Yes. Starter is free with included usage caps.

Is Builder still unlisted?

No. The live page has a $20 flat Builder row.

Same as Qdrant?

No. Qdrant has an Apache-2.0 engine and a usage-based Cloud. Pinecone's public rows start at Free / $20 / $50 min / $500 min.

Alternatives

• Qdrant: OSS engine plus Cloud Free / usage-based Standard.
• Milvus: Open vector database.
• Supabase: Postgres BaaS, not a dedicated vector service.

Tips

1. Quote Free / $20 / $50 min / $500 min from the live page.
2. Recheck write/read unit rates before you treat $0.33/GB as the whole bill.
3. Do not call Starter example workloads a quote.

Conclusion

Pinecone is a priced managed vector DB with Free, $20 Builder, $50 Standard minimum, and $500 Enterprise minimum, not an unpriced ML toolkit. Start at pinecone.io/pricing, then decide whether Qdrant already covers the engine you need.