Pinecone vs Vearch
Pinecone
pinecone.ioVearch
vearch.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | Pinecone | Vearch |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Vector Databases | 8.9 (#2) | 7.8 (#16) |
| API | Pinecone exposes REST and gRPC APIs for index administration and vector or document operations. | The Router exposes REST endpoints for upsert, delete, search, and query operations. |
| Hybrid search | Pinecone supports combined dense semantic and sparse keyword retrieval in the same database. | It supports vector search together with scalar filtering. |
| Integrations | The partner ecosystem covers AI and machine-learning tools, search, cloud infrastructure and services integrations. | The project lists integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangChainGo, and LangChain4j. |
| Product | Pinecone describes its product as a fully managed vector database built for AI workloads. | Vearch is a cloud-native distributed vector database for similarity search of embedding vectors in AI applications. |
| SDKs | Official SDKs include Python, TypeScript/Node.js, Java, Go and .NET clients. | The README lists Python, Go, Java, and Rust SDKs. |
| Support | The Starter plan includes community support via Discord; paid plans include free support, and Enterprise includes Pro support. | The project directs users to GitHub Issues, a public email discussion list, and Slack for community support. |
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
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.
Vearch
Vearch is a free, open-source, cloud-native distributed vector database for similarity search in AI applications. It searches embedding vectors and can combine vector queries with scalar filtering for metadata conditions. The project describes replication and elastic scale-out and says it can retrieve vectors among millions of objects in milliseconds. Its Router exposes REST operations for upserting, deleting, searching, and querying data. Client SDKs are listed for Python, Go, Java, and Rust, with integrations for LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangChainGo, and LangChain4j. Deployment options include Kubernetes through Helm, Docker Compose in standalone or cluster mode, Docker, and compilation from source. PartitionServer uses Raft-based replication for document partitions, while Gamma is a Faiss-based vector search engine. Vearch is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and supports Linux and macOS self-hosted deployments. Community support is available through GitHub Issues, an email discussion group, and Slack. The VisualSearch demo requires an image retrieval plugin for object detection and feature extraction.