Machine Learning · pricing
Pinecone pricing
Pinecone publishes 4 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.
As of 30 August 2026, Pinecone pricing is free, then $20/month across 4 published tiers. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free, then $20/month
- Model
- Freemium
- Tiers
- 4
- Free tier
- Yes
Pinecone plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Free | 8 | Entry tier |
| Builder | $20/month | 7 | +$20/month, 7 more features |
| Standard | $50/month | 10 | +$30/month, 10 more features |
| Enterprise | $500/month | 7 | +$450/month, 7 more features |
What each tier adds
The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.
Starter
FreeThe entry tier. It covers 2gb storage, 2m write units/month, 1m read units/month, dense/sparse/full-text indexes, console metrics, community discord support.
Builder
$20/monthOver Starter, this tier adds:
- 10GB storage
- 5M write units
- 2M read units
- 5 projects
- Up to 5 users
- Prometheus/Datadog monitoring
- Free support
Standard
$50/monthOver Builder, this tier adds:
- Unlimited storage ($0.33/GB/month)
- 20 indexes per project
- 100K namespaces
- Dedicated Read Nodes
- Backup/restore capability
- RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)
- SSO support
- 3-week trial with $300 credits
- Available on AWS, Azure, GCP
- Pay-as-you-go after $50 minimum
Enterprise
$500/monthOver Standard, this tier adds:
- 99.95% uptime SLA
- BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) option
- Private endpoints
- Customer-managed encryption
- Audit logs
- HIPAA compliance
- Pro support included
Where Pinecone stops being free
Starter, Free
- 2GB storage
- 2M write units/month
- 1M read units/month
- Dense/Sparse/Full-Text indexes
- Console metrics
- Community Discord support
- Single project
- Up to 2 users
Builder, $20/month
The first thing you pay for:
- 10GB storage
- 5M write units
- 2M read units
- 5 projects
- Up to 5 users
- Prometheus/Datadog monitoring
- Free support
What the product covers
The full Pinecone feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Vector similarity search
- Metadata filtering
- Namespace partitioning
- Real-time updates
- Hybrid search
Integrations
- OpenAI
- Cohere
- LangChain
- LlamaIndex
- Hugging Face
Platform
- Web support
People bring Pinecone in for vector database for ai/ml applications, semantic search implementation, recommendation systems, rag (retrieval-augmented generation) architectures. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Pinecone are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Machine Learning
Across the 3 machine learning tools in this directory that publish a starting price, the median entry point is $29/month. Pinecone starts at $20/month, which puts it below the middle of its category.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pinecone (this page) | Free, then $20/month | freemium | - | |
| ClearML | Free | Open-source self-hosted, with paid hosted and enterprise tiers | - | vs Pinecone |
| Langwatch | Free, then €29/month | Tiered subscription with usage-based overage charges | - | vs Pinecone |
| Haystack | Free | Open-source with optional paid enterprise support | - | vs Pinecone |
| Semantic Kernel | Free | Open source, no pricing | - | vs Pinecone |
| Fal AI | $1.89/hour | usage-based | - | vs Pinecone |
| H2O.ai | Free | freemium | - | vs Pinecone |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Pinecone badges page.
Before you pay for Pinecone
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 4 tiers between Free and $500/month, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Pinecone runs on web, and is published by Pinecone of San Francisco, California. The full record is on the Pinecone review, and the rest of the category is under best machine learning tools.
Pinecone pricing questions
- How much does Pinecone cost?
- Pinecone publishes 4 tiers, from Free for Starter up to $500/month for Enterprise. The entry tier costs nothing.
- Does Pinecone have a free plan?
- Yes. The Starter tier costs nothing and covers 2gb storage, 2m write units/month, 1m read units/month. Paying starts at $20/month for Builder.
- What is the difference between Starter and Builder on Pinecone?
- Builder costs $20/month against Free, and adds 10gb storage, 5m write units, 2m read units, 5 projects.
- Is the Enterprise plan on Pinecone worth it?
- That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is 99.95% uptime sla, byoc (bring your own cloud) option, private endpoints, customer-managed encryption. It costs $500/month against $20/month for Builder. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.
- Is Pinecone expensive for a machine learning tool?
- It starts below the middle of its category. Across the 3 machine learning tools in this directory that publish a starting price, the median entry point is $29/month; Pinecone starts at $20/month.
- Which machine learning tools can I use without paying?
- 7 of the 8 machine learning tools listed alongside Pinecone have a free tier: ClearML, Langwatch, Haystack, Semantic Kernel, H2O.ai.
- What am I actually paying for with Pinecone?
- The record lists 11 features across 3 areas: other, integrations, platform. In practice it is brought in for vector database for ai/ml applications, semantic search implementation, recommendation systems.
- Does Pinecone charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 4 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Pinecone prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Pinecone against before paying?
- The closest machine learning tools in this directory are ClearML, Langwatch, Haystack, Semantic Kernel. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Pinecone covering price, platforms and features.