Vector databases · Comparison
Pinecone vs Qdrant Cloud vs Weaviate Cloud vs Zilliz Cloud
4 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 | Qdrant Cloud | Weaviate Cloud | Zilliz 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. | Worth the priceA managed open-source vector engine on nodes you size, with no per-query charge, an exit to self-hosted Qdrant and a free cluster for about 1M vectors. | 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. | Saves engineering timeManaged Milvus with a serverless option billed per request, free bulk import from object storage, and the Apache 2.0 engine as a way out. |
| Overall score | 6.8 | 7.0 | 6.2 | 7.2Best |
| Free option | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | –Not measured | No card needed | No card needed | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $20/mo | $0.03566/node-hour | $45/mo minimum | $4/million vCUs |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing unit | Read units, write units and GB-month of storage (serverless) | Provisioned nodes per hour (RAM, vCPU and disk), plus backup storage | Vector dimensions, GiB of storage and GiB of backup, for each of 3 replicas | Serverless: vCUs and GB-month; Dedicated: CU-hours and GB-month |
| Free option | Starter free tier (2 GB, AWS us-east-1); 21-day Standard trial with $300 in credits | Free 1 GB cluster (about 1M 768-dimension vectors), no card | Free cluster (100,000 objects), no card | Free 5 GB cluster, no card; $100 trial credits for 30 days |
| Reference scenario (1M vectors, 1M queries) | $176.60/mo on Standard, computed | $102.51/mo on Standard (3 × mx1 nodes), official calculator | $255/mo on Flex, official calculator | $113.28/mo on Serverless (GCP us-west1), computed |
| Plan minimum | Builder $20 flat; Standard $50; Enterprise $500 a month | None on Standard; Premium minimum not published | Flex $45 a month; Premium through sales | None |
| Hybrid search | Every plan (dense, sparse and full-text indexes) | Every plan (dense plus sparse or BM25) | Every plan (BM25F plus vector, fused) | Every plan (BM25 full-text plus vector) |
| Backups | Standard and up, scheduled; $0.10 per GB-month | Standard and up, scheduled; collection snapshots on every plan | Daily on Flex, kept 7 days; restore through support | Dedicated clusters; point-in-time recovery on Business Critical |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 | SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001 not stated | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 (Markdown copy of the security page) | SOC 2 Type II (under NDA) and ISO 27001:2022 |
| HIPAA BAA | Standard add-on $190/mo (6-month minimum); included on Enterprise | From Standard; BAA scope through Solutions Engineering | Premium Dedicated, through sales | Business Critical, through sales |
| EU regions | AWS Ireland and Frankfurt, GCP Netherlands, from Builder | AWS Frankfurt and Ireland, GCP Frankfurt, Azure Germany West Central | Region selection on Dedicated tiers; EU regions not named | Serverless in AWS Frankfurt; Dedicated in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions |
| SSO | SAML on Standard and Enterprise | Premium (console sign-in) | SAML on Premium | SAML or OIDC on Enterprise and up |
| BYOC | Enterprise only, priced by sales | Hybrid Cloud and Private Cloud, through sales | Named on the security page; through sales | Through sales, annual commitment |
| Data export | List and fetch API; no bulk export | Downloadable snapshots; scroll API | Cursor API; Parquet export not available on Cloud | SDK iterators; backup file export in private preview |
| Self-host path | None (Pinecone Local reached end of life on Oct 7, 2026) | Qdrant open source (Apache 2.0), restore from snapshot | Weaviate open source (BSD-3-Clause; some enterprise features licensed separately) | Milvus (Apache 2.0), same SDKs |
| 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, Qdrant Cloud is managed open-source Qdrant billed by node-hour: no per-query charge, a large free cluster and a documented way back to self-hosting. Prices live in the calculator, and SSO and private networking need Premium. | 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. | From its public pages, Zilliz Cloud is managed Milvus with per-request serverless billing, free bulk import, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and an open-source exit. Serverless runs in two regions only, and several prices differ between its pages. |
Evidence: Pinecone: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Qdrant Cloud: 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; Zilliz 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 per-request billing with no nodes to size, and SAML SSO and a HIPAA add-on on a plan bought online.
- Pick Qdrant Cloud when
- You want an Apache 2.0 engine you can self-host, downloadable snapshots and a lower scenario cost ($102.51 a month).
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 Qdrant Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Qdrant Cloud when
- You want node-based pricing with no per-query charge, an Apache 2.0 engine to fall back on and a lower scenario cost ($102.51 against $176.60).
- Pick Pinecone when
- You want SAML SSO, bulk import and a HIPAA add-on on a self-serve plan without sizing nodes.
From our Qdrant Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Qdrant Cloud when
- You want audit logs on the first paid plan, downloadable snapshots and a lower scenario cost.
- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want three replicas and backups included without sizing nodes, and ISO 27001.
From our Qdrant Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Qdrant Cloud when
- You want provisioned nodes in AWS us-east-1 and audit logs without moving to an enterprise plan.
- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want per-request serverless billing, ISO 27001, bulk import from object storage and SSO on a self-serve plan.
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.
From our Weaviate Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want three replicas and backups included without sizing nodes, and ISO 27001.
- Pick Qdrant Cloud when
- You want an audit log on the first paid plan, downloadable snapshots and a lower scenario cost ($102.51 a month).
From our Weaviate Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want no per-request charges and three replicas on the first paid plan.
- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want bulk import from object storage, and SAML SSO and an audit log on a plan bought online.
From our Zilliz Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want per-request serverless billing, free import from object storage, ISO 27001 and SSO on a self-serve plan.
- Pick Qdrant Cloud when
- You want provisioned nodes in AWS us-east-1 at a lower scenario cost ($102.51) and audit logs on the first paid plan.
From our Zilliz Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want no monthly minimum, an open-source engine behind the service and a lower scenario cost ($113.28 against $176.60).
- Pick Pinecone when
- You want serverless in AWS us-east-1, backups on the serverless plan and a HIPAA add-on bought online.
From our Zilliz Cloud review
Checked Oct 16, 2026- Pick Zilliz Cloud when
- You want bulk import from object storage and SSO without a sales contract.
- Pick Weaviate Cloud when
- You want no per-request billing and three replicas included on the first paid plan.
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
- Qdrant CloudStandard$0.03566/node-hourSmallest node (2 GiB RAM, 0.5 vCPU, 8 GiB disk) in AWS us-east-1, about $26.10 a month; billed hourly, no minimum
- Nodes up to 256 GiB RAM and 64 vCPU
- Scheduled backups and high-availability setups
- Audit logs on Qdrant 1.17 and later
- AWS, GCP and Azure regions, EU included
- 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
- Zilliz CloudStandard (Serverless)$4/million vCUsPlus $0.30 per GB-month of storage; GCP us-west1 and AWS eu-central-1 only; no minimum
- Reads and writes billed in vCUs
- Import from object storage at no charge
- Organization and project RBAC, API keys
- No backups on Serverless clusters
Prices as listed on each pricing page, in USD per month, excluding tax. Observed: Pinecone 2026-10-16, Qdrant Cloud 2026-10-16, Weaviate Cloud 2026-10-16, Zilliz Cloud 2026-10-16.
Which one fits
- If you need to start today without a sales call
- Zilliz CloudSelf-serve sign-up, no card needed; the highest score of the 4 self-serve products here (7.2/10).
- If you want to try it without entering a card
- Zilliz CloudFree plan, no card needed, and the highest score of the 3 that skip the card (7.2/10).
- Lowest starter price
- Pinecone$20/mo for the Builder (flat, usage capped) plan. Qdrant Cloud and Zilliz Cloud list no comparable paid price.
- Highest overall score
- Zilliz Cloud7.2/10 (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