Pinecone vs Weaviate
Pinecone is a service you rent and nothing else, while Weaviate is a database you can also download and run yourself. The difference shows up in exit options, in how much sits on the bill besides the cluster, and in where the company is registered.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderVendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Choose Pinecone ifyou want a hosted index with no engine to operate and are fine depending on one vendor with no self-hosted edition.
Choose Weaviate ifyou want the option of running the database locally under an open licence, or you want embeddings and a query agent offered next to the storage.
Pinecone and Weaviate side by side
| Pinecone | Weaviate | |
|---|---|---|
| Our vector databases rank | #5 of 12 | #2 of 12 |
| Established in | United States | Netherlands |
| List price, 4 November 2026 | Starter free; Builder flat monthly fee; Standard and Enterprise with monthly minimum usage (amounts not taken from the pack) | Free sandbox cluster; Flex pay-as-you-go; Premium prepaid contract via sales |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Self-hostable | — | — |
| Built for | Teams that want a managed index with no servers or tuning to run | Teams that want embeddings, hybrid search and storage handled in one hosted service |
| Not for | Buyers who need an open-source engine to run themselves | Buyers who need dedicated-cluster pricing before talking to sales |
Both are reviewed in full in our vector databases ranking: Pinecone and Weaviate.
Where they differ
Pinecone 1 · Weaviate 2 · open 1- 01
Can you run it yourself
Weaviate's repository carries the BSD-3-Clause licence, and its README describes a local Docker quickstart next to the hosted cloud. Pinecone's pricing page presents managed infrastructure as the service and offers no self-hosted download. Pinecone does describe Bring Your Own Cloud as generally available, but that is still run by Pinecone.
Edge: Weaviate
- 02
What the free tier actually holds
Weaviate's free cluster has 100,000 objects, 1 GB of memory, 10 GB of disk, 1 collection and up to 3 tenants, one cluster per user. Pinecone lists its Starter plan as free on the pricing page we read, without a comparable object count there. Weaviate is clearer about the ceiling, which helps planning, though the ceiling is low.
Depends on the buyer
- 03
Scaling up and the shape of the bill
Pinecone steps from a flat Builder fee to Standard with a minimum monthly usage and a three-week trial including credits. Weaviate offers pay-as-you-go Flex on a shared cluster, then Premium as a prepaid contract through sales. Pinecone's ladder is easier to read end to end; Weaviate's dedicated pricing is not published.
Edge: Pinecone
- 04
Extras and security gates
Weaviate sells embeddings per million tokens and a Query Agent with 1,000 free requests a month, which shortens a first build but adds meters. Pinecone puts SAML sign-on, backup and restore and Dedicated Read Nodes on Standard, and customer-managed keys on Enterprise. Weaviate's README lists multi-tenancy, replication and RBAC in the product itself.
Edge: Weaviate
When neither fits
If you want a separate managed service built on an open engine, or something that lives inside a database you already run, look at Qdrant or pgvector.
Pinecone or Weaviate: questions
3 answersIs Pinecone open source?
No. The pricing page we read offers managed service only, with no self-hosted download.
Where are the two companies based?
Pinecone Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco in the United States. Weaviate B.V. is a private limited company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Can I try both for free?
Yes. Pinecone has a free Starter plan, and Weaviate has a free cluster limited to 100,000 objects and 3 tenants.
Sources
Checked 4 November 2026- Pinecone pricing: Plan ladder, Standard trial, SSO and backup gating, Enterprise keys, managed-only service and BYOC.
- Pinecone privacy policy: San Francisco headquarters of Pinecone Systems, Inc.
- Weaviate pricing: Free cluster limits, Flex, Premium contract, embeddings and Query Agent metering.
- Weaviate privacy policy: Weaviate B.V. registered in Amsterdam.
- Weaviate on GitHub: BSD-3-Clause licence.
- Weaviate README: Docker quickstart, multi-tenancy, replication and RBAC.