Vector databases · Comparison

Pinecone vs Qdrant Cloud vs Zilliz Cloud

3 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

Pinecone vs Qdrant Cloud vs Zilliz Cloud: value, access facts, plan limits and bottom lines
Metric	Pinecone	Qdrant 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 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	7.2Best
Free option	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan
Card to start	–Not measured	No card needed	No card needed
Getting access	Self-serve	Self-serve	Self-serve
Starter priceCheapest paid plan	$20/mo	$0.03566/node-hour	$4/million vCUs
Pricing model	Usage-based	Usage-based	Usage-based
Pricing page	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	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 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	$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	None
Hybrid search	Every plan (dense, sparse and full-text indexes)	Every plan (dense plus sparse or BM25)	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	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 (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	Business Critical, through sales
EU regions	AWS Ireland and Frankfurt, GCP Netherlands, from Builder	AWS Frankfurt and Ireland, GCP Frankfurt, Azure Germany West Central	Serverless in AWS Frankfurt; Dedicated in AWS, GCP and Azure EU regions
SSO	SAML on Standard and Enterprise	Premium (console sign-in)	SAML or OIDC on Enterprise and up
BYOC	Enterprise only, priced by sales	Hybrid Cloud and Private Cloud, through sales	Through sales, annual commitment
Data export	List and fetch API; no bulk export	Downloadable snapshots; scroll API	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	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, 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; 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 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 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 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.

Entry price

Baseline: each product's cheapest paid plan, per month. Included usage differs, so read the line under each price.

Pinecone
Builder
$20/mo
Flat 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 Cloud
Standard
$0.03566/node-hour
Smallest 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
Zilliz Cloud
Standard (Serverless)
$4/million vCUs
Plus $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, 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 3 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 2 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

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