Pineconevs
AWS SageMaker
AWS SageMaker: Build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale
Pinecone
Vector database for machine learning
As of 30 August 2026, Pinecone has a free plan and paid plans start at $20/month. Pinecone is a fully managed vector database designed for machine learning applications. Softwr lists it under Machine Learning. Pinecone is launched in 2019, available on Web.
Overview
What Pinecone does
Pinecone is a fully managed vector database designed for machine learning applications. It provides fast and scalable similarity search for embeddings, enabling semantic search, recommendation systems, and retrieval-augmented generation at production scale.
What people use it for
- Vector database for AI/ML applications
- Semantic search implementation
- Recommendation systems
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Pinecone.
- Reads and writes are billed on separate meters, and reads are far more expensive, at $16 to $18 per million against $4 to $4.50 for writes on Standard
- Unit prices vary by region, so the same workload costs different amounts in different places
- The Standard plan carries a $50 monthly minimum and Enterprise $500, charged whether or not the usage reaches it
- Enterprise pays more per unit as well as more in minimum, at $24 to $27 per million reads against Standard's $16 to $18
- Indexes and namespaces are capped by plan, at 5 indexes on the free tier and 20 on Standard
- RBAC and SSO require the Standard plan
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Pinecone
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- PineconevsGoogle Vertex AI
Google Vertex AI: Unified ML platform to build, deploy, and scale AI models
- PineconevsAzure Machine Learning
Azure Machine Learning: Enterprise-grade machine learning service
- PineconevsDataRobot
DataRobot: Enterprise AI platform for automated machine learning
Pricing
What Pinecone costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Starter
Free
- 2GB storage
- 2M write units/month
- 1M read units/month
- Dense/Sparse/Full-Text indexes
- Console metrics
- Community Discord support
Builder
$20 /mo
- 10GB storage
- 5M write units
- 2M read units
- 5 projects
- Up to 5 users
- Prometheus/Datadog monitoring
Standard
$50 /mo
- Unlimited storage ($0.33/GB/month)
- 20 indexes per project
- 100K namespaces
- Dedicated Read Nodes
- Backup/restore capability
- RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)
Enterprise
$500 /mo
- 99.95% uptime SLA
- BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) option
- Private endpoints
- Customer-managed encryption
- Audit logs
- HIPAA compliance
Capabilities
Features
Vector similarity search
Metadata filtering
Namespace partitioning
Real-time updates
Hybrid search
OpenAI
Integration with OpenAI
Cohere
Integration with Cohere
LangChain
Integration with LangChain
LlamaIndex
Integration with LlamaIndex
Hugging Face
Integration with Hugging Face
Web support
Available on web
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Does Pinecone offer a free plan?
Yes, Pinecone's Starter tier is free and includes 2GB storage, 2M write units/month, 1M read units/month, and supports up to 2 users and 1 project.
SourceWhat are Pinecone's storage costs on the Standard plan?
On the Standard plan, storage costs $0.33/GB per month. Read units cost $16-18 per million units; write units cost $4-4.50 per million units.
SourceWhat support options does Pinecone provide?
Starter tier includes community Discord support. Builder tier includes free support. Standard tier support costs $29/month for Developer or $250/month for Pro. Enterprise tier includes Pro support.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Pinecone
- Company
- Pinecone
- Based in
- San Francisco, California
Keep looking
Where to go from Pinecone
- Pinecone alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Pinecone pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Pinecone badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Machine Learning softwareThe full category
- Best Machine Learning softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Machine Learning software for
Compare Pinecone with
- AWS SageMaker
- Azure Machine Learning
- Google Vertex AI
- DataRobot
- Milvus
- Weaviate
- LlamaIndex
- LangChain
- Haystack
- Ray
- Keras
- Kubeflow
- Apache Spark MLlib
- Weights & Biases
- Alteryx
- Anaconda
- Domino Data Lab
- Weaviate
Other Machine Learning software
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Free plan13 researched notesThe machine learning library inside Apache Spark, for data that will not fit on one machine
Free plan14 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Pinecone, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Pinecone
Pinecone alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Pinecone pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Pinecone
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Pinecone badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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