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Pinecone vs Zilliz Cloud

Pinecone: Fully managed serverless vector database with built-in embedding, reranking and assistants. Zilliz Cloud: Fully managed Milvus from its creators, with serverless, dedicated and BYOC deployments.

key differences

  • Zilliz Cloud is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than Pinecone (≤ 1 PB).
  • Only Zilliz Cloud has full-text search, ttl / expiry, compression, online schema changes, streaming ingest.

choose pinecone for

  • +RAG over company documents
  • +Semantic search in SaaS products
  • +Recommendation and similarity lookups
  • +Multi-tenant AI apps with per-customer namespaces

best at · Vector search, RAG

choose zilliz-cloud for

  • +Production RAG without running Milvus
  • +Large-scale semantic and image search
  • +Multi-tenant AI SaaS backends

best at · Vector search, RAG, Search

overview
Primary model
Vector
Vector
Also supports
–
Search Engine
Type
Managed service
Managed service
Status
Active
Active
Developer
Pinecone Systems, Inc.
Zilliz
First release
2021
2022
Latest version
–
–
License
ProprietaryProprietary SaaS
ProprietaryProprietary SaaS
Free tier
✓
✓
popularity
WhichDB Score
15.5
0.4
Rank
#213
#656
GitHub stars
–
–
Stack Overflow questions
116
–
scale & guarantees
Comfortable data size
Large (≤ 1 PB)
Massive (Multi-PB)
Horizontal scaling
Native
Native
Multi-region
None
None
ACID
None
None
Consistency
Eventual
Tunable, Strong, Eventual
Schema
Schemaless
Strict
Architecture
Serverless, Distributed, Shared storage
Distributed, Serverless, Shared storage
deployment
Self-hosted
—
—
Vendor-managed cloud
✓
✓
Serverless
✓
✓
Embedded
—
—
Edge
—
—
Clouds
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
capabilities
Transactions
—
—
Joins
—
—
Secondary indexes
✓
✓
Full-text search
—
✓
Vector search
✓
✓
Geospatial
—
—
JSON
✓
✓
Change data capture
—
—
Triggers
—
—
Stored procedures
—
—
Materialized views
—
—
TTL / expiry
—
✓
Pub/Sub
—
—
Columnar storage
—
—
In-memory
—
—
Durable persistence
✓
✓
Compression
—
✓
Encryption at rest
✓
✓
Role-based access
✓
✓
Time travel
—
—
Branching
—
—
Online schema changes
—
✓
Streaming ingest
—
✓
Offline sync
—
—
Runs in WebAssembly
—
—
interfaces
Query languages
Pinecone API (metadata filter expressions)
Milvus API (boolean filter expressions)
Client languages
Python, JavaScript, Java, Go, .NET, Rust
Python, Java, Go, Node.js, C#
Best for
Vector search, RAG
Vector search, RAG, Search

Pinecone vs Zilliz Cloud: FAQ

What is the difference between Pinecone and Zilliz Cloud?

Pinecone: Fully managed serverless vector database with built-in embedding, reranking and assistants. Zilliz Cloud: Fully managed Milvus from its creators, with serverless, dedicated and BYOC deployments. Zilliz Cloud is built for larger datasets (Multi-PB) than Pinecone (≤ 1 PB). Only Zilliz Cloud has full-text search, ttl / expiry, compression, online schema changes, streaming ingest.

When should I choose Pinecone over Zilliz Cloud?

Choose Pinecone for RAG over company documents; semantic search in SaaS products; and recommendation and similarity lookups. Choose Zilliz Cloud for production RAG without running Milvus; large-scale semantic and image search; and multi-tenant AI SaaS backends.

Is Pinecone or Zilliz Cloud more popular?

Pinecone ranks #213 on the WhichDB Score (15.5/100) and Zilliz Cloud ranks #656 (0.4/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.

Are Pinecone and Zilliz Cloud open source?

No. Pinecone is proprietary, closed-source software. No. Zilliz Cloud is proprietary, closed-source software.