# Pinecone Inference

> pinecone.io | Databases and KV, Inference; 2 records: free tier, limits, identity cost and evidence.

HTML https://fshy.ajam.dev/p/pinecone/ | JSON https://fshy.ajam.dev/api/v1/entity/pinecone.json | how to read a record: https://fshy.ajam.dev/llms-full.txt

## Pinecone

- `databases-kv/pinecone` | qualifies-with-caveat | evidence documented | binding request-rate | category vector database
- needs card no, phone no, ID no, institution no | verified 2026-10-22T03:05:00.000Z (live) | stale on 2026-11-22
- url https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/
- price USD 0.33/GB-month storage; USD 0.10/GB egress | parsed USD 330/TB-mo
- free tier: Starter: 2 GB serverless storage, 5 indexes, 1 project, 1 GB egress per month, us-east-1 only | unit: GB | metered on: stored-bytes | read on: 2026-10-22 | source: [1]
- per-object cap: 2 GB of index storage per organization; 100 namespaces per index | source: [1]
- retention: an index persists while the plan is active; no deletion clock is published for Starter | source: [1]
- egress: 1 GB per month on Starter. Builder is 10 GB; Standard includes 100 GB then USD 0.10/GB | metered: yes | free allowance: 1 GB per month | price per TB: USD 0.10/GB on Standard | source: [1]
- identity: email | detail: email signup; no card on Starter
- interface: rest, cli
- limits:
  - per-object-cap: 2 GB of storage per organization, not per index [1]
  - request-rate (binding): 1 GB egress per month on Starter [1]
  - request-rate (binding): 5 indexes, 1 project per organization, us-east-1 only, and 100 namespaces per index [1]
  - request-rate (binding): no connection limit is published for Starter; recorded as a gap [1]
  - per-object-cap: 100 namespaces per index [1]
- interface detail: a REST API for data and control planes; Python, Node and Java SDKs; the pinecone CLI
- tooling: the Pinecone SDKs and CLI; no Postgres extension path
- composes with: a free vector index that mostly matters for a workload too large for pgvector on a free Postgres, because pgvector is already available on both Neon and Supabase at no extra cost
- reliability: no reliability event recorded
- notes: 2 GB is an organization-level cap and one project is the whole allowance, so there is no way to shard around it. 1 GB a month of egress is 33 MB a day, which a retrieval workload serving embeddings exceeds before the 2 GB of storage matters.
- evidence note: the pricing comparison table was read. The pricing page states them and is now the only source for them.
- evidence:
  - [1] 2026-10-22: Starter: storage up to 2 GB, egress up to 1 GB/month, indexes up to 5, namespaces per index 100; Builder USD 25 with 10 GB storage and 10 GB egress; Standard unlimited at USD 0.33/GB-month
- sources:
  - [1] https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/

## Pinecone Inference (embeddings and reranking)

- `inference/pinecone-inference` | qualifies-with-caveat | evidence documented | binding volume-quota | category embedding and rerank API, monthly free token and request allowance on the Starter plan | tier Starter
- needs card unknown, phone no, ID no, institution no | verified 2026-11-03T07:34:03.660Z (live) | stale on 2026-12-04
- url https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/
- free tier: Starter plan, labelled Free: 5,000,000 embedding tokens a month per model (llama-text-embed-v2, multilingual-e5-large, pinecone-sparse-english-v0, text-embedding-3-small and -large) and 500 rerank requests a month (bge-reranker-v2-m3, pinecone-rerank-v0) | unit: tokens | metered on: request-count | read on: 2026-11-03 | source: [1] | note: the pricing page lists the three Pinecone-hosted embedding models and bge-reranker-v2-m3 only; the limits page also lists text-embedding-3 models and pinecone-rerank-v0 for Starter; gemini-embedding-2 and cohere-rerank-4-fast are not available on Starter
- per-object cap: not applicable
- retention: not applicable
- egress: metered: no
- identity: email | detail: a Pinecone account; the pricing page labels Starter 'Free' and its start link goes to the billing settings of the console; unverified: the sign-up form fields and whether a card is asked, because the console page returned no content to the page reader
- interface: rest
- limits:
  - volume-quota (binding): Starter: 5,000,000 embedding tokens per month per model and 500 rerank requests per month per rerank model; reaching either returns HTTP 429 [1]
  - request-rate: Starter embedding throughput 250,000 passage tokens and 50,000 query tokens per minute per model (llama-text-embed-v2, multilingual-e5-large); bge-reranker-v2-m3 and pinecone-rerank-v0 60 requests per minute; inference requests 100 per second and 2,000 per minute per project [1]
- binding note: 500 rerank requests a month binds first on the rerank side; 5M tokens a month per model on the embedding side
- endpoint: https://api.pinecone.io/embed
- tooling: Pinecone SDKs and the REST inference endpoints embed and rerank; embeddings can be called without creating an index
- composes with: the Starter plan's index allowance (5 indexes, 2 GB) is the same account's vector store, so embed, store and rerank stay under one key
- reliability: no reliability event recorded; the Starter allowance is per month and resets
- notes: derived for scale: 500 rerank requests a month is about 16 a day, so rerank here suits a prototype or a nightly batch
- evidence note: the monthly token and request allowances and the per-minute limits are quoted from the vendor's limits page and pricing page; the sign-up form fields are unverified. The two pages disagree on pinecone-rerank-v0 for Starter.
- evidence:
  - [1] 2026-11-03: Starter allows 5,000,000 embedding tokens a month per model | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: | Embedding tokens per month per model | 5,000,000 | 10,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
  - [1] 2026-11-03: Starter allows 500 rerank requests a month on bge-reranker-v2-m3 | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: | `bge-reranker-v2-m3` | 500 | 1,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
  - [1] 2026-11-03: Starter allows 500 rerank requests a month on pinecone-rerank-v0, which the pricing page does not list for Starter | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: | `pinecone-rerank-v0` | 500 | Not available | Unlimited | Unlimited |
  - [1] 2026-11-03: Starter passage embedding throughput on llama-text-embed-v2 is 250,000 tokens per minute | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: | `llama-text-embed-v2` | Passage | 250,000 | 250,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
  - [1] 2026-11-03: bge-reranker-v2-m3 is limited to 60 requests per minute on Starter | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: | `bge-reranker-v2-m3` | 60 | 60 | 60 | 60 |
  - [1] 2026-11-03: inference requests are limited to 2,000 per minute per project on every plan | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: | Inference requests per minute per project | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
  - [1] 2026-11-03: the monthly limits answer HTTP 429 | capture: sha256:e1668959d515e9a83b1133eb19a4de08607883265d785392bcc8e228e2f9e622 | quote: Reaching a monthly usage limit returns a `429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS`.
  - [2] 2026-11-03: the pricing page states 5M tokens a month included on Starter for llama-text-embed-v2 | capture: sha256:8febedf53b359a24e25ca59072d2111c853b5240b074232f1d93a2b9e5f33fd9 | quote: | llama-text-embed-v2 | 5M tokens/mo incl. | 10M tokens/mo incl. | $0.16/M tokens | $0.16/M tokens |
  - [2] 2026-11-03: the pricing page states 500 rerank requests a month included on Starter | capture: sha256:8febedf53b359a24e25ca59072d2111c853b5240b074232f1d93a2b9e5f33fd9 | quote: | bge-reranker-v2-m3 | 500 requests/mo incl. | 1,000 requests/mo incl. | $2/1k requests | $2/1k requests |
  - [2] 2026-11-03: Pinecone Inference is part of the Starter plan, which the page labels Free | capture: sha256:8febedf53b359a24e25ca59072d2111c853b5240b074232f1d93a2b9e5f33fd9 | quote: - Pinecone [Inference](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/inference/understanding-inference.md)
- sources:
  - [1] https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/database-limits/rate-limits.md
  - [2] https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/