vioscaleAI
Comparison

Pinecone vs Qdrant

On the evidence we track, Pinecone leads this comparison with a composite score of 75/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Pinecone full profile →Qdrant full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
★Pinecone75
Qdrant56
Score
vioscaleAI score
Pinecone75 / 100medium · 74%
Qdrant56 / 100medium · 65%
Pricing
Free tier
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Model
Pineconefreemium
Qdrantcommercial
Price level
Pineconemid
Qdrantlow
Starting price
Pinecone$20
Qdrant–
Transparent
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Integrations
Count
Pinecone8
Qdrant4
Security
Certifications
Gdpr
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Hipaa
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Iso27001
Pinecone✓
Qdrant–
Soc2
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
Pinecone99.95
Qdrant–
Status page
Pinecone✓
Qdrant–
Adoption
Dependent repos
Pinecone–
Qdrant0
Github stars
Pinecone–
Qdrant35,060
Activity
Commits last 30d
Pinecone–
Qdrant100
Release
Cadence days
Pinecone–
Qdrant18
History
Pinecone–
Qdrant20 items
License
Spdx
Pinecone–
QdrantApache-2.0
Language
Primary
Pinecone–
QdrantRust
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Pinecone6 items
Qdrant7 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for vector databases. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Deployment
Deployment
PineconeManaged
QdrantSelf-hosted
Serverless / consumption pricing
Pinecone✓
Qdrant-
Index
ANN index (HNSW / IVF / DiskANN / ScaNN / flat)
PineconeHNSW, DiskANN
QdrantHNSW
Distance metrics (cosine / dot / Euclidean)
Pineconecosine
Qdrantdot product
Query
Metadata filtering
PineconePost-filter
Qdrant-
Hybrid search (dense + sparse fusion)
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Built-in BM25 / lexical
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Storage
Quantization
Pinecone-
QdrantScalar
On-disk vs in-memory
PineconeTiered
QdrantDisk-backed
Scale
Multi-tenancy (namespaces / collections / tenants)
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Horizontal scale
PineconeSharded / distributed
QdrantSharded / distributed
Consistency
Consistency
PineconeEventual
Qdrant-
Licensing
Licence class
PineconeProprietary
QdrantSource-available
Classification
Purpose-built vs feature-of-parent
PineconeDedicated DBMS
QdrantDedicated DBMS

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Pinecone

Leader

A cloud-hosted vector database designed for AI applications, enabling fast semantic search and retrieval without performance degradation at scale. Supports dense, sparse, and full-text search with automatic indexing and built-in compliance for production use.

Independently observed

Qdrant

A database system designed for storing and searching vectors with comprehensive filtering capabilities. It provides production-ready APIs and tools for semantic similarity matching and embedding-based applications.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Pinecone

Leader
from $20/moHybridFree tier21-day trial

Free tier available. Paid plans from $20/month; production plans $50–$500/month minimum plus usage-based charges.

  • StarterFree
    • Dense, Sparse, and Full-Text Indexes
    • Console Metrics
    • Community Support via Discord
    • USA region only
  • Builder$20/month flat
    • Everything in Starter
    • Increased usage limits
    • Multiple projects and users
    • Any cloud and region
    • Prometheus and Datadog monitoring
    • +1 more
  • Standard$50/month minimum + usage-based. 3-week free trial with $300 credits.
    • Everything in Builder
    • Unlimited storage
    • Pay-as-you-go Database On-Demand, Inference, and Assistant usage
    • Dedicated Read Nodes
    • Import from object storage
    • +4 more
  • Enterprise$500/month minimum + usage-based
    • Everything in Standard
    • 99.95% Uptime SLA
    • Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)
    • Private Endpoints
    • Customer Managed Encryption Keys
    • +5 more
  • Bring Your Own CloudContact sales
    • Pinecone runs in customer's cloud account and VPC
    • Zero-access operations – no SSH, VPN, or inbound access
    • Outbound-only operations with auditable trail
    • AWS PrivateLink, GCP Private Service Connect, or Azure Private Link
as of verify ↗

Qdrant

Usage-basedFree tier

Usage-based pricing billed monthly based on CPU, memory, and disk storage consumption. Free tier available.

as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✓
Self-hosted
Pinecone✗
Qdrant✓
On-premise
Pinecone✗
Qdrant✓
Hybrid
Pinecone✓
Qdrant✗

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (4)
  • AWS
  • Slack
  • GCP
  • Azure

Pinecone

Leader
20 total - 16 not shared
  • Azure OpenAI
  • GitHub CoPilot
  • Azure Marketplace
  • Microsoft Marketplace
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Drive
  • Vercel
  • Claude
  • Datadog
  • Prometheus
  • Cursor
  • Vercel AI SDK
  • Confluent
  • Zapier
  • Discord
Independently observed

Qdrant

14 total - 10 not shared
  • Adobe
  • Hubspot
  • Arize
  • Google DeepMind
  • Qualcomm
  • Cohere
  • LangChain
  • FastEmbed
  • Google Cloud Storage
  • Azure Blob Storage
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Pinecone or Qdrant: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.