Neon vs Pinecone
Neon
neon.com
Pinecone
pinecone.ioSide by side
| Figure | Neon | Pinecone |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.11/mo | $20/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 5 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 8.3 (#9) | 8.9 (#3) |
| API | Neon provides an API for managing projects and databases programmatically. | Pinecone exposes REST and gRPC APIs for index administration and vector or document operations. |
| Compliance | Neon states it undergoes annual SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 audits, and has achieved HIPAA compliance. | Pinecone states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified, HIPAA compliant with a BAA available on request, and GDPR-ready. |
| Integrations | Neon documents integrations and workflows involving Vercel, Prisma, Drizzle ORM, GitHub Actions, and its CLI. | The partner ecosystem covers AI and machine-learning tools, search, cloud infrastructure and services integrations. |
| Product | Neon describes itself as a serverless, cloud-hosted PostgreSQL database service. | Pinecone describes its product as a fully managed vector database built for AI workloads. |
| Security | Neon states that stored data is encrypted with AES-256 and data in transit uses TLS 1.2 or higher. | Pinecone states that it encrypts data at rest and in transit using AES-256 and supports API key roles and RBAC. |
| Support | Neon directs customers to its Discord community for questions and discussion. | The Starter plan includes community support via Discord; paid plans include free support, and Enterprise includes Pro support. |
| Use cases | Neon describes its Launch plan as suited to growing projects and early startups, and Scale as intended for production workloads requiring advanced security, availability, and compliance features. | Pinecone identifies semantic search, recommendations, and retrieval-augmented generation as use cases for its database. |
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
Neon
Neon is a managed, cloud-hosted PostgreSQL service for relational databases. It adjusts compute resources to workload and can suspend compute during inactivity, restarting it when database activity resumes. Database branches are isolated, can be created in about a second, and share data through copy-on-write storage. Neon supports connection pooling through PgBouncer, read replicas, high availability, point-in-time recovery, JSON data, and seven-day backup retention. An API lets teams manage projects and databases programmatically. Documented workflows include Vercel, Prisma, Drizzle ORM, GitHub Actions, and its CLI. The Free plan is free, with 10 projects, 50 CU-hours per month per project, 0.5 GB storage per project, 10 branches per project, and 5 GB monthly egress. Launch is $0.11 a month, billed at $0.106 per CU-hour; Scale is $0.22 a month, billed at $0.222 per CU-hour. Neon states that stored data is encrypted with AES-256 and data in transit uses TLS 1.2 or higher. It says it joined Databricks in May 2025 and is now part of the Databricks Platform.
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.