Pinecone
The managed vector database most RAG systems were built on.
Visit Pinecone Free Starter tier; Standard from $50/mo minimum
What is Pinecone?
Pinecone is a fully managed vector database for storing embeddings and running similarity search at scale — the retrieval layer behind many RAG applications. Serverless pricing means you pay for what you store and query rather than provisioning servers.
Key features
- Serverless vector indexes with pay-per-use pricing
- Hybrid search combining dense and sparse vectors
- Built-in reranking and integrated embedding models
- Namespaces and metadata filtering for multi-tenant apps
- SDKs for Python, Node, Java, Go, and .NET
Pros
- Zero-ops — no clusters to size or manage
- Battle-tested at scale by many production RAG systems
- Integrated embedding and reranking reduce moving parts
Cons
- Costs climb quickly with high query volume
- Closed source — no self-hosting
- Less flexible schema and search features than Weaviate or Postgres extensions
Best for
Teams building RAG who want managed infrastructureSemantic search over large document setsMulti-tenant SaaS with per-customer namespaces
Related comparisons
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