Pinecone is a managed knowledge platform for vector, sparse, and full-text search behind AI apps.
Core capabilities
The pricing page describes Pinecone Database on demand, Pinecone Inference, and Pinecone Assistant. Starter includes dense, sparse, and full-text indexes, plus console metrics. Higher plans add a choice of cloud and region, more projects and users, monitoring exports, dedicated read nodes, import from object storage, backup and restore, RBAC, and SSO. Enterprise adds a 99.95% uptime SLA, private endpoints, customer-managed keys, audit logs, and bring-your-own-cloud deployment. The page also says BYOC runs in your cloud account without Pinecone needing SSH or inbound access.
How to use it
Start in the console from pinecone.io. Create an index, send embeddings or use the hosted inference listed on the plan, and query it from your application. A pricing calculator is linked from the page for estimating usage.
Who it suits
It suits developers adding retrieval to an AI feature. It is infrastructure for search over your data, not a chat product for end users.
Pricing, access and limits
Starter is free for trying the product and small applications. Builder is $20 per month. Standard has a $50 per month minimum and then usage pricing; its trial is 3 weeks and includes $300 in credits. Enterprise has a $500 per month minimum and then usage pricing. Standard and Enterprise say you pay the minimum, then pay as you go after usage passes that amount. A separate bring-your-own-cloud offer asks you to contact them for pricing.
Frequently asked questions
Is Pinecone a chatbot?
No. It stores and searches vectors and text so your own AI application can retrieve knowledge.
Is there a free way to try it?
Yes. Starter is free. Standard also has a 3-week trial with $300 in credits.
