Pinecone

license

proprietary(SaaS)

source

closed

self-host

none(BYOC runs Pinecone-managed in customer VPC, not OSS)

managed

Pinecone-Cloud

Fully proprietary managed vector DB; no open source core (contrast Milvus/Qdrant which are OSI-licensed). BYOC is still closed-source software run in customer cloud.

• https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/ recorded 2026-08-13

  Tiers Starter, Builder, Standard and Enterprise, plus BYOC: "Bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) runs Pinecone in your cloud account and VPC. Pinecone does not need SSH, VPN, or inbound network access to operate the system." Enterprise adds a 99.95% uptime SLA, private endpoints and customer-managed keys. The phrase "open source" does not appear on the page.

• https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/get-started/overview recorded 2026-08-13

  Pinecone documented as a fully managed vector database reached through an API key; no source release or self-hostable build offered.