kitio.aiPinecone vs Weaviate
A side-by-side look at pricing plans, free tiers, features, pros and cons, updated for 2026. Pinecone has the lower starting price: about $20 a month, against $45 for Weaviate.
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
- Hybrid vector and keyword search
- Built-in vectorizer modules
- Multi-tenancy
- Generative search
- Weaviate Cloud
| Feature | Pinecone | Weaviate |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Managed serverless vector database for search and RAG | Open-source vector database with hybrid search and built-in vectorizers |
| Category | Models & APIs | Models & APIs |
| Pricing model | Freemium | Freemium |
| Starting price | $20/mo | $45/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Made by | Pinecone | Weaviate |
| Based in | United States | Netherlands |
| Rating | No ratings yet | No ratings yet |
| Key features |
|
|
Pricing compared
Pinecone has the lower starting price: about $20 a month, against $45 for Weaviate.
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
Free
- 1 cluster, 100K objects
- 1 GB memory, 10 GB disk
- Basic support
Flex
$45/mo
- Starting price, pay-as-you-go
- Shared cloud cluster
- RBAC, 99.5% uptime
Premium
Contact sales
- Prepaid contract
- Shared or dedicated deployment
- Up to 99.95% uptime
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
Weaviate
- Strong hybrid search
- Open source and self-hostable
- Good multi-tenant support
- Memory-hungry at scale
- Cloud pricing changed often
- Schema concepts to learn
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 Weaviate if you want:
- Strong hybrid search
- Open source and self-hostable
- Good multi-tenant support
Watch out: memory-hungry at scale.
Pinecone vs Weaviate FAQ
What is the difference between Pinecone and Weaviate?
Pinecone: Managed serverless vector database for search and RAG. Weaviate: Open-source vector database with hybrid search and built-in vectorizers. Both are models & apis tools.
Is Pinecone or Weaviate cheaper?
Pinecone has the lower starting price: about $20 a month, against $45 for Weaviate.
Do Pinecone and Weaviate have free plans?
Pinecone: Yes. Weaviate: Yes.
Who makes Pinecone?
Pinecone is made by Pinecone, based in United States.
Who makes Weaviate?
Weaviate is made by Weaviate, based in Netherlands.
Which should I choose, Pinecone or Weaviate?
Choose Pinecone if you value no infrastructure to manage and scales to billions of vectors. Choose Weaviate if you value strong hybrid search and open source and self-hostable.