# Pinecone Pinecone is a retrieval option for building AI agents. Fully managed vector database. No index to operate. ## Facts - Layer: Retrieval (What it knows) - Vendor: Pinecone - Licence: proprietary - Pricing: freemium - Self-hostable: no - SDKs: py, ts - Requires: `PINECONE_API_KEY` - Docs: https://www.pinecone.io/ - Last verified: 2026-08-21 ## When to reach for it - You are choosing a retrieval component — what it knows. - You are happy to depend on a hosted service and would rather not operate this yourself. ## Alternatives in the retrieval layer | Option | What it does | Licence | Self-host | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | pgvector | Vector search inside the Postgres you already run. | open source | yes | | Qdrant | Rust vector database with strong payload filtering, self-host or cloud. | open source | yes | | Chroma | Embedded vector store that runs in-process. Ideal first index. | open source | yes | | turbopuffer | Vector and full-text search on object storage — very cheap at rest. | proprietary | no | | LanceDB | Embedded multimodal store backed by the Lance columnar format. | open source | yes | Head to head: - https://newagent.build/compare/pinecone-vs-pgvector - https://newagent.build/compare/pinecone-vs-qdrant - https://newagent.build/compare/pinecone-vs-chroma - https://newagent.build/compare/pinecone-vs-turbopuffer - https://newagent.build/compare/pinecone-vs-lancedb ## Add it to a stack ```bash curl -fsSL "https://newagent.build/api/stack?retrieval=pinecone&format=sh" | sh ``` ## Machine interfaces - `GET https://newagent.build/api/registry` — every component as JSON - `GET https://newagent.build/api/vendors` — vendors, with the repo and releases feed to watch - `GET https://newagent.build/api/advise?q=` — recommended stack for a description - `GET https://newagent.build/api/stack?=&format=sh|json|md|yml|agents|env` — a stack as files - `GET https://newagent.build/llms.txt` — the whole registry in one fetch Any page here also returns markdown if you send `Accept: text/markdown`.