Pick Algolia if
search / ecommerce teams who will stay on Free (10K search requests, 50K records) while they open a first Visual Editor pin, then pay Grow at $0.50 / 1K requests after 10K (records $0.40 / 1K after 100K).
Read the Algolia pageAlgolia vs Pinecone
Our take
Pick Algolia if search / ecommerce teams who will stay on Free (10K search requests, 50K records) while they open a first Visual Editor pin, then pay Grow at $0.50 / 1K requests after 10K (records $0.40 / 1K after 100K). Pick Pinecone if rAG / search teams who will stay on Starter at $0 (2 GB, 1M read units) while they open a first Assistant, then buy Builder at $20 / month flat or Standard at $50 / month minimum
Best for
Algolia Records you merchandise inside a $0 start
Pinecone Indexes plus an Assistant you start at $0
Free plan
Algolia $0 · no card. 10K search requests / month. 50K records. 5K recommendation requests / month. 5K crawls / month
Pinecone No free plan
Lowest paid
Algolia Crawler overage $0.80
Pinecone Builder $20
Next step up
Algolia
Pinecone Support add-ons $29
Runs where
Algolia Local or hosted
Pinecone Local or hosted
Watch out
Algolia Free caps at 10K requests and 50K records
Pinecone Starter is a usage cap, not unlimited vectors
Last checked
Algolia 2026-10-23 · algolia.com/pricing
Pinecone 2026-10-23 · pinecone.io/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Pinecone if
rAG / search teams who will stay on Starter at $0 (2 GB, 1M read units) while they open a first Assistant, then buy Builder at $20 / month flat or Standard at $50 / month minimum when they need multi-cloud and pay-as-you-go.
Read the Pinecone page