Catalog/ № 046
Pinecone
situationalManaged vector database — the serverless default for embeddings at scale.
pinecone.ioVerified 2026-08-15
ledger entry · observed by @whysanesanders
Operationally the smoothest managed vector DB, and the free tier covers prototypes. But self-hosted Qdrant or pgvector now match it for most workloads at a fraction of the cost — pay only if ops time is your constraint.
Known limitations
- Costs scale poorly versus self-hosted alternatives.
- Proprietary; migrating away is a rewrite.
- Pricing-model changes have burned users before.
Facts
- pricing
- freemium1
- price note
- free Starter; Builder $20/mo; Standard pay-as-you-go (min $50/mo)
- free tier
- yes
- open source
- no
- api
- yes
- self-host
- no
- category
- data
Sources
If we can't show the source, we don't print the number.
Same shelf — data
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