Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Pinecone
Amazon OpenSearch Service
aws.amazon.com
Pinecone
pinecone.ioSide by side
| Figure | Amazon OpenSearch Service | Pinecone |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 5 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 7.5 (#24) | 8.9 (#3) |
| Compliance | AWS says OpenSearch Service is HIPAA-eligible and compliant with PCI DSS, SOC, ISO, and FedRAMP standards. | Pinecone states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified, HIPAA compliant with a BAA available on request, and GDPR-ready. |
| Founded | 2006 | 2019 |
| Hybrid search | It can combine vector embeddings and text-based keywords in a single search request. | Pinecone supports combined dense semantic and sparse keyword retrieval in the same database. |
| Security | The service supports encryption at rest and in transit, and granular permissions for indices, documents, and fields. | Pinecone states that it encrypts data at rest and in transit using AES-256 and supports API key roles and RBAC. |
| Vector search | Its vector engine supports k-NN and ANN search using HNSW and IVF implementations, including searches over billions of high-dimensional vectors. | The service stores dense and sparse vectors and performs approximate nearest-neighbor similarity search. |
Plans
Pinecone
- Builder$20 a month
- Standard$50 a month
- Enterprise$500 a month
- StarterFree
- Bring your own cloud (BYOC)Priced on request
In their own words
Amazon OpenSearch Service
Amazon OpenSearch Service has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Pinecone
Pinecone is a fully managed vector database for AI workloads, available through web and API access. Its stated uses include semantic search, recommendations and retrieval-augmented generation. It supports dense, sparse and full-text indexes, metadata filters and namespaces; the maker says automatic indexing makes new writes searchable within seconds. Listed integrations include LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI, Cohere, Databricks, Snowflake and Airbyte. The free Starter plan has limits including one project, two users, five indexes and 100 namespaces per index. Builder costs $20 a month. Standard is $50 a month minimum applied to usage, with usage above that minimum charged pay-as-you-go; Enterprise is $500 a month minimum on the same basis. Pinecone says it encrypts data at rest and in transit and supports API-key roles and RBAC. It lists SOC 2 Type II certification, HIPAA compliance with a BAA available on request, GDPR readiness and a 99.95% uptime SLA. Its TypeScript SDK is intended for server-side use because browser use can expose API keys.