Pinecone vs Typesense
Pinecone
pinecone.io
Typesense
typesense.orgSide by side
| Figure | Pinecone | Typesense |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | $22/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 8 |
| Spec score · Search Databases | 8.8 (#4) | 8.0 (#14) |
| Spec score · Search & Vector Database Platforms | 8.9 (#4) | 8.1 (#10) |
| Compliance | Pinecone states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified, HIPAA compliant with a BAA available on request, and GDPR-ready. | Typesense Cloud states it is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and HIPAA compliant, with a BAA available to eligible customers on a Business Support plan or above for at least a year. |
| Founded | 2019 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States | Houston, TX |
| Integrations | The partner ecosystem covers AI and machine-learning tools, search, cloud infrastructure and services integrations. | Listed integrations include Firebase, AWS Amplify, Laravel Scout, LangChain, LlamaIndex, InstantSearch, OpenAI, and Google ML platforms. |
| Product | Pinecone describes its product as a fully managed vector database built for AI workloads. | Typesense is an open-source, typo-tolerant search engine for instant, typically sub-50ms, search-as-you-type experiences. |
| Security | Pinecone states that it encrypts data at rest and in transit using AES-256 and supports API key roles and RBAC. | Typesense Cloud says clusters are isolated and dedicated, API traffic is encrypted over HTTPS, and data is protected with full-disk encryption at rest. |
| Support | The Starter plan includes community support via Discord; paid plans include free support, and Enterprise includes Pro support. | Typesense offers community support through GitHub Issues and public Slack, plus paid prioritized support with SLAs, consulting, and training for Cloud. |
Plans
Pinecone
- Builder$20 a month
- Standard$50 a month
- Enterprise$500 a month
- StarterFree
- Bring your own cloud (BYOC)Priced on request
Typesense
- Self-hostedFree
- Typesense Cloud$22 a month
- Free supportFree
- Typesense Cloud cluster$22 a month
- Developer support$160 a month
- Business support$400 a month
- Enterprise support$700 a month
- Enterprise Signature support$1,900 a month
In their own words
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.
Typesense
Typesense is an open-source search engine for adding search to a website or app using data you supply; it does not crawl the web. It is designed for typo-tolerant, search-as-you-type results, typically in under 50 milliseconds. Search tools include tunable ranking, sorting, faceting, filtering, grouping, federated search and geo search. Listed AI capabilities include vector and hybrid search, built-in RAG, natural-language, image and voice search.
You can run it locally or on a server, or use hosted Typesense Cloud. Its REST API has listed integrations including Firebase, AWS Amplify, Laravel Scout, LangChain, LlamaIndex, InstantSearch, OpenAI and Google ML platforms. Typesense offers a free plan; Cloud clusters start at $22 a month. Cloud billing includes cluster runtime and bandwidth, and the hourly cluster fee continues while a cluster runs without traffic. The one-time free Cloud tier applies to select configurations and does not renew monthly.