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Pinecone vs pgvector: free plans compared

Both are in Dev Infrastructure & AI APIs. Here is what each gives you for free, from the vendors’ pricing pages, with the date we last verified each offer (latest ).

Pinecone
Pinecone is a vector database and AI knowledge platform.
How to get Pinecone free
pgvector
pgvector adds vector columns and exact or approximate nearest-neighbor search (HNSW and IVFFlat indexes) to Postgres, so embeddings sit next to your other data with ACID compliance and JOINs. Its licence allows use for any purpose, without fee.
How to get pgvector free
Free plans compared: Pinecone, pgvector
PineconeDev Infrastructure & AI APIsTry
pgvectorDev Infrastructure & AI APIsTry
Free plan
  • Free forever
  • Free Starter plan
  • Free forever
  • Free Postgres extension for vector similarity search
How long it's freeFree foreverFree forever
Cheapest paid plan$20/moBuilderNot in our data
Commercial useNot in our dataAllowed on the free plan
Best forBuild AI agents, Host & deploy appsAI engineersHost & deploy appsDevelopers who already use Postgres and need vector search, Teams building semantic search without a separate vector database, Apps that keep embeddings and relational data in one place
Limitations
  • Starter runs on AWS in the us-east-1 region
  • Storage on Starter is capped at 2 GB
  • Support is through the community on Discord
  • You install the extension yourself; it needs Postgres 13+
  • Indexed vector columns are limited to 2,000 dimensions
  • Approximate indexes trade some recall for speed
How to get it freeFree account · email, Google, GitHub or Microsoft
  1. 1Click Start for free on pinecone.io
  2. 2Sign up with Google, GitHub, Microsoft or your email
  3. 3Create your first index on the Starter plan
Get the free plan 		Self-host
  1. 1Install the pgvector extension on your Postgres server
  2. 2Enable it with CREATE EXTENSION vector in each database
  3. 3Create a vector column, insert embeddings and query nearest neighbors
Get the free plan
Free offer verified

Pinecone vs pgvector: common questions

Is Pinecone or pgvector free?
Both have a free option. Pinecone has a free plan: Free Starter plan (checked 2026-10-25). pgvector has a free plan: Free Postgres extension for vector similarity search (checked 2026-10-24).
Which free plan includes more?
It depends on what you need; here is what each free plan includes. Pinecone: Free Starter plan (source: pinecone.io, checked 2026-10-25). pgvector: Free Postgres extension for vector similarity search (source: github.com, checked 2026-10-24).
How do I get each for free?
Pinecone: Click Start for free on pinecone.io; Sign up with Google, GitHub, Microsoft or your email; Create your first index on the Starter plan (checked 2026-10-21). pgvector: Install the pgvector extension on your Postgres server; Enable it with CREATE EXTENSION vector in each database; Create a vector column, insert embeddings and query nearest neighbors (checked 2026-10-24).

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