Vector databases · Comparison
Pinecone vs Weaviate Cloud
2 products compared side by side: what you pay for with each one first, then the five access facts, entry prices, recorded plan limits and the bottom line of each review. The evidence note under the table says how each product was checked.
Side by side
| Metric | Pinecone | Weaviate Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Saves engineering timeA serverless vector index with hybrid search, hosted models, backups and bulk import on a plan bought online, with no servers or replicas to size. | Saves engineering timeThe open-source Weaviate engine run for you, with hybrid search, RBAC and multi-tenancy on every plan and no per-query or per-write charges. |
| Overall score | 6.8Best | 6.2 |
| Free option | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | –Not measured | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $20/mo | $45/mo minimum |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing unit | Read units, write units and GB-month of storage (serverless) | Vector dimensions, GiB of storage and GiB of backup, for each of 3 replicas |
| Free option | Starter free tier (2 GB, AWS us-east-1); 21-day Standard trial with $300 in credits | Free cluster (100,000 objects), no card |
| Reference scenario (1M vectors, 1M queries) | $176.60/mo on Standard, computed | $255/mo on Flex, official calculator |
| Plan minimum | Builder $20 flat; Standard $50; Enterprise $500 a month | Flex $45 a month; Premium through sales |
| Hybrid search | Every plan (dense, sparse and full-text indexes) | Every plan (BM25F plus vector, fused) |
| Backups | Standard and up, scheduled; $0.10 per GB-month | Daily on Flex, kept 7 days; restore through support |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 (Markdown copy of the security page) |
| HIPAA BAA | Standard add-on $190/mo (6-month minimum); included on Enterprise | Premium Dedicated, through sales |
| EU regions | AWS Ireland and Frankfurt, GCP Netherlands, from Builder | Region selection on Dedicated tiers; EU regions not named |
| SSO | SAML on Standard and Enterprise | SAML on Premium |
| BYOC | Enterprise only, priced by sales | Named on the security page; through sales |
| Data export | List and fetch API; no bulk export | Cursor API; Parquet export not available on Cloud |
| Self-host path | None (Pinecone Local reached end of life on Oct 7, 2026) | Weaviate open source (BSD-3-Clause; some enterprise features licensed separately) |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Pinecone puts the most on a self-serve plan here: hybrid search, backups, bulk import, SAML SSO and a HIPAA add-on all on Standard. Query cost grows with namespace size, and there is no open-source engine to fall back on. | From its public pages, Weaviate Cloud is the managed form of an open-source engine, billed by what you store with three replicas included. Enterprise controls sit on Premium through sales, and its rates are easiest to read through the calculator. |
Evidence: Pinecone: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Weaviate Cloud: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
When to pick each
In the words of each review, with the date its facts were checked.
From our Pinecone review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Pinecone when
- You want bulk import from object storage, SAML SSO on a self-serve plan and a lower scenario cost ($176.60 against $255).
- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want an open-source engine with the same API and a bill that does not grow with the number of queries.
From our Weaviate Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want an open-source engine with the same API and a bill that does not grow with query volume.
- Pick Pinecone when
- You want SAML SSO, bulk import from object storage and a HIPAA add-on on a plan bought online.
Entry price
Baseline: each product's cheapest paid plan, per month. Included usage differs, so read the line under each price.
- PineconeLowest priceBuilder$20/moFlat fee, card billing only; usage beyond the caps is blocked, not billed
- Up to 10 GB storage, 5M write units and 2M read units a month
- 10 GB egress a month
- US, EU and Asia regions on AWS, GCP and Azure
- No backups, bulk import or RBAC
- Weaviate CloudFlex$45/mo minimumPay as you go, monthly; from $0.00465 per 1M vector dimensions, $0.12 per GiB storage, $0.03036 per GiB backup
- Highly available clusters with replication
- Daily backups kept 7 days
- AWS or GCP, 7 regions
- Embeddings and Query Agent billed by usage
Prices as listed on each pricing page, in USD per month, excluding tax. Observed: Pinecone 2026-10-16, Weaviate Cloud 2026-10-16.
Which one fits
- If you need to start today without a sales call
- PineconeSelf-serve sign-up; the highest score of the 2 self-serve products here (6.8/10).
- If you want to try it without entering a card
- Weaviate CloudFree plan, no card needed; scored 6.2/10.
- Lowest starter price
- Pinecone$20/mo for the Builder (flat, usage capped) plan.
- Highest overall score
- Pinecone6.8/10 (Good). The review shows the score breakdown and the run behind it.
Picked by fixed rules from the table above, not by hand. How we score
Full reviews
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