kitio.aiPinecone vs Qdrant
A side-by-side look at pricing plans, free tiers, features, pros and cons, updated for 2026. Pinecone starts at $20/mo and Qdrant starts at See pricing page. Check both pricing pages for current plans.
At a glance
Best for
Category
Pricing model
Starting price
Free plan
Made by
Based in
Rating
Key features
- Serverless indexes
- Hybrid dense and sparse search
- Metadata filtering
- Hosted embeddings and rerank
- pg_pinecone extension
- Payload filtering
- Quantization
- Hybrid sparse and dense search
- Multivector support
- Free cloud cluster
| Feature | Pinecone | Qdrant |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Managed serverless vector database for search and RAG | Fast open-source vector search engine written in Rust |
| Category | Models & APIs | Models & APIs |
| Pricing model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Starting price | $20/mo | See pricing page |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Made by | Pinecone | Qdrant |
| Based in | United States | Germany |
| Rating | No ratings yet | No ratings yet |
| Key features |
|
|
Pricing compared
Pinecone starts at $20/mo and Qdrant starts at See pricing page. Check both pricing pages for current plans.
Free plan
Cheapest paid plan
Top plan
Free trial
4 plans
Starter
Free
- Up to 2 GB storage
- 2M write, 1M read units/mo
- AWS only
Builder
$20/mo
- Flat monthly price
- Up to 10 GB storage
- Multiple projects and users
Standard
$50/mo
- Minimum usage, then pay as you go
- 3-week trial with $300 credits
- Backup and restore
Enterprise
$500/mo
- Minimum usage, then pay as you go
- 99.95% uptime SLA
- Private endpoints, audit logs
3 plans
Free Tier
Free
- Single node cluster
- 0.5 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 4GB disk
- Free cloud inference (select models)
Standard Tier
Usage-based
- Managed production clusters
Enterprise
Contact sales
- Enterprise security and compliance
- On-premise options
Prices in USD, checked Oct 28, 2026 or later. Plans change often, so confirm on each tool's site before you buy.
Pros and cons
Pinecone
- No infrastructure to manage
- Scales to billions of vectors
- Free starter tier
- Monthly minimum on paid plans
- Closed-source core service
- Costs grow with heavy reads
Qdrant
- High performance
- Generous free cloud tier
- Easy local setup
- Fewer built-in embedding helpers
- Cluster tuning needs care
- Smaller ecosystem than Postgres
Which one should you choose?
Choose Pinecone if you want:
- No infrastructure to manage
- Scales to billions of vectors
- Free starter tier
Watch out: monthly minimum on paid plans.
Choose Qdrant if you want:
- High performance
- Generous free cloud tier
- Easy local setup
Watch out: fewer built-in embedding helpers.
Pinecone vs Qdrant FAQ
What is the difference between Pinecone and Qdrant?
Pinecone: Managed serverless vector database for search and RAG. Qdrant: Fast open-source vector search engine written in Rust. Both are models & apis tools.
Is Pinecone or Qdrant cheaper?
Pinecone starts at $20/mo and Qdrant starts at See pricing page. Check both pricing pages for current plans.
Do Pinecone and Qdrant have free plans?
Pinecone: Yes. Qdrant: Yes.
Who makes Pinecone?
Pinecone is made by Pinecone, based in United States.
Who makes Qdrant?
Qdrant is made by Qdrant, based in Germany.
Which should I choose, Pinecone or Qdrant?
Choose Pinecone if you value no infrastructure to manage and scales to billions of vectors. Choose Qdrant if you value high performance and generous free cloud tier.