Pinecone

What it is for

Pinecone is a hosted assistant-playground desk: you ask a file-grounded question, and Starter is Free. Use it when the job is indexes plus an Assistant you start at $0, not when you need a $20 chat seat.

What makes it unique: the cover is the official Pinecone Assistant thread (What share repurchase has NVIDIA done recently?, 9.9 million shares / $8.0 billion, cite 10q_nvidia_0524.pdf) from the product still — not a pricing card. The answer itself is ops of Assistant. Pinecone bills $0 or $20 / $50 / $500 tiles, not a chat seat.

Key features

• Assistant — a file-grounded answer with citations (cover still; docs). One desk. Cover 10q_nvidia_0524.pdf sits here.
• Indexes — a dense / sparse index you create (docs). An index, not an Assistant thread. Serverless sits here.
• Inference — hosted embeddings / rerank you call (docs). Inference, not an index. Tokens sit here.
• Backups — a snapshot you restore (docs; pricing $0.10 / GB / mo on Standard). A backup, not inference. Restore sits here.
• Console metrics — index charts in the console (docs). Metrics, not a backup. Starter includes console metrics on the tile.

The citation list on the cover is the same Assistant pipeline (not a sixth desk). Starter / Builder / Standard tiles are the meter. Support at $29 / $250 is an add-on SKU, not a desk we fold into Assistant.

Who it's for

Best fit: 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.

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-23 (Asia/Shanghai) from pinecone.io/pricing. Tiles print Starter Free, Builder $20 / month flat, Standard $50 / month min. usage, and Enterprise $500 / month min. usage. Standard trial copy prints 3 week trial includes $300 credits.

• Starter — Free. Up to 2 GB storage, 2M write units / mo, 1M read units / mo. Console metrics. Community Discord.
• Builder — $20 / month flat. 10 GB. 5 projects / 5 users. Prometheus / Datadog.
• Standard — $50 / month minimum, then pay-as-you-go. Storage $0.33 / GB / mo. Read units $16–$18 / million. Write units $4–$4.50 / million. Backups $0.10 / GB / mo. Restore $0.15 / GB. HIPAA add-on $190 / mo.
• Enterprise — $500 / month minimum. 99.95% SLA. BYOC / CMEK.
• Support add-ons — Developer $29 / mo. Pro $250 / mo.

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Limitations / costs

• Starter is a usage cap, not unlimited vectors. Crossing 2 GB / 1M reads is the $20 Builder tile or the $50 Standard minimum.
• $50 is a monthly minimum, not a seat. Usage above $50 is PAYG.
• An Assistant + index desk, not a self-hosted Qdrant. For Qdrant see Qdrant. For Weaviate see Weaviate.

Alternatives

• Qdrant — open-source vectors when you want Qdrant’s self-host, not Pinecone’s $0 / $20 Assistant.
• Weaviate — hybrid search when you want Weaviate’s collections, not Pinecone’s $50 Standard minimum.
• Chroma — local embeddings when you want Chroma’s collections, not Pinecone’s NVIDIA 10-Q thread.

Official tutorial

Official Pinecone channel video: Getting Started with Pinecone (oEmbed author: Pinecone). First-party index walkthrough; the Assistant still is the cover. Indexes on the video are a second desk, not generate-on-Assistant.

Written path: pinecone.io/pricing plus the Assistant still.

Website

https://www.pinecone.io

Repository

https://github.com/pinecone-io

Source

Catalog row curated for AI Tools Nav. Cover is the official Pinecone Assistant thread from the product blog CDN. Dollars checked on pinecone.io/pricing (Starter Free; Builder $20/mo; Standard $50/mo min; Enterprise $500/mo min; HIPAA $190/mo; support $29/$250). Tutorial oEmbed author: Pinecone.

Last verified

2026-10-23 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.