---
title: "Free Pinecone Alternatives"
slug: "free-pinecone-alternatives"
description: "Pinecone’s free Starter plan against seven verified free vector databases - Qdrant, Zilliz, Supabase, Neon, Upstash, Cloudflare and MongoDB - with limits."
verifiedAt: "2026-10-31"
options: 8
canonical: "https://aifree.dev/compare/free-pinecone-alternatives"
---

# Free Pinecone Alternatives

> Pinecone’s free Starter plan against seven verified free vector databases - Qdrant, Zilliz, Supabase, Neon, Upstash, Cloudflare and MongoDB - with limits.

Pinecone’s free Starter plan is a good default - 2 GB of serverless storage across 5 indexes, with monthly read and write units - but it is one project in one region (AWS us-east-1), with community support only, and past the free units you move to Builder or Standard. Every alternative trades something else: Qdrant and Zilliz give a dedicated free cluster but pause or cap it; Supabase, Neon and MongoDB put vectors next to the rest of your data; Upstash and Cloudflare Vectorize are serverless and cheap to leave idle. This page lines up Pinecone’s own plan against seven verified free options, using the same data as the [free AI coding tools directory](https://aifree.dev/free-ai-coding-tools), each re-checked monthly. The [free vector databases guide](https://aifree.dev/learn/free-vector-database) walks the choice step by step.

## Side by side

| Offer | What is free | Card | Status | The catch |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Pinecone Starter Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/pinecone-starter-plan) (baseline) | 2 GB | no card | listed | AWS us-east-1 only, 1 project and 2 users, community support only; going past the monthly read/write units means upgrading to Builder ($20/month flat) or Standard ($50/month minimum). |
| [Qdrant Cloud Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/qdrant-cloud-free-tier) | Free tier | no card | listed | Single node only, no high availability or automatic backups; unused free clusters are suspended after 1 week and deleted after 4 weeks of inactivity. |
| [Zilliz Cloud Free Cluster](https://aifree.dev/offer/zilliz-cloud-free-cluster) | 5 GB | no card | listed | Up to 5 collections and 2.5M vCUs a month; advanced features need the Serverless or Dedicated trial. |
| [Supabase Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/supabase-free-plan) | 0.5 GB | no card | listed | Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, the database is capped at 500 MB, and there are no automatic backups. |
| [Neon Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/neon-free-plan) | 100 hours/month | no card | listed | Compute always scales to zero after 5 minutes idle and stops until the next billing period once a project uses its 100 CU-hours; writes are blocked past 1 GB per project or 20 GB in total. |
| [Upstash Vector Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/upstash-vector-free-tier) | 10,000 requests/day | no card | listed | Capped at 10K queries/updates a day and 1,536 dimensions on one free database, with no uptime SLA; adding a card moves the index to pay-as-you-go. |
| [Cloudflare Vectorize Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-vectorize-free-tier) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-31 | 5 million stored dimensions is about 6,500 vectors at 768 dimensions; free accounts get 100 indexes and 1,000 namespaces per index. |
| [MongoDB Atlas Free Cluster (M0)](https://aifree.dev/offer/mongodb-atlas-free-cluster) | 0.5 GB | no card | listed | 512 MB covers documents plus indexes, throughput is capped at 100 operations per second, there are no backups, and the cluster is paused after 30 days with no connections. |

## The 8 options, in detail

### [Pinecone Starter Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/pinecone-starter-plan.md)

Free Pinecone vector database: 2 GB storage, 5 serverless indexes

- Up to 2 GB storage, 5 serverless indexes, 100 namespaces per index
- Up to 1M read units and 2M write units per month
- Up to 1 GB egress per month
- 1 project, up to 2 users

**Catch:** AWS us-east-1 only, 1 project and 2 users, community support only; going past the monthly read/write units means upgrading to Builder ($20/month flat) or Standard ($50/month minimum).

### [Qdrant Cloud Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/qdrant-cloud-free-tier.md)

Free-forever Qdrant vector database cluster, 1 GB RAM, no credit card

- 1 single-node cluster: 0.5 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 4 GB disk
- About 1M vectors at 768 dimensions (vendor estimate)
- Limited choice of cloud providers and regions
- Only manual snapshots and restores via API

**Catch:** Single node only, no high availability or automatic backups; unused free clusters are suspended after 1 week and deleted after 4 weeks of inactivity.

### [Zilliz Cloud Free Cluster](https://aifree.dev/offer/zilliz-cloud-free-cluster.md)

Free managed Milvus cluster: 5 GB storage, 2.5M vCUs per month

- 5 GB storage (about 1M 768-dim vectors)
- 2.5M vCUs per month
- Up to 5 collections
- Community support (Slack)

**Catch:** Up to 5 collections and 2.5M vCUs a month; advanced features need the Serverless or Dedicated trial.

### [Supabase Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/supabase-free-plan.md)

Free Postgres with pgvector, auth, storage and edge functions on 2 projects

- 2 active free projects
- 500 MB database size per project
- Shared CPU, 500 MB RAM
- 50,000 monthly active users

**Catch:** Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, the database is capped at 500 MB, and there are no automatic backups.

### [Neon Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/neon-free-plan.md)

Free serverless Postgres with pgvector: 100 projects, no credit card

- Up to 100 projects, 10 branches each
- 100 CU-hours of compute per project per month
- Autoscaling up to 2 CU (8 GB RAM); scale to zero after 5 minutes, always on
- 1 GB storage per project, 20 GB per account

**Catch:** Compute always scales to zero after 5 minutes idle and stops until the next billing period once a project uses its 100 CU-hours; writes are blocked past 1 GB per project or 20 GB in total.

### [Upstash Vector Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/upstash-vector-free-tier.md)

Free serverless vector database: 10K queries/updates per day, 1 GB data

- 1 free database
- 10,000 queries/updates per day
- Max 200M vectors x dimensions
- Max 1,536 dimensions per vector

**Catch:** Capped at 10K queries/updates a day and 1,536 dimensions on one free database, with no uptime SLA; adding a card moves the index to pay-as-you-go.

### [Cloudflare Vectorize Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-vectorize-free-tier.md)

Free vector database on Cloudflare Workers: 5M stored vector dimensions

- 30 million queried vector dimensions per month
- 5 million stored vector dimensions
- 100 indexes per account (Free)
- 1,000 namespaces per index (Free)

**Catch:** 5 million stored dimensions is about 6,500 vectors at 768 dimensions; free accounts get 100 indexes and 1,000 namespaces per index.

### [MongoDB Atlas Free Cluster (M0)](https://aifree.dev/offer/mongodb-atlas-free-cluster.md)

Free-forever MongoDB Atlas M0 cluster with Vector Search, 512 MB

- 1 free M0 cluster per project: 512 MB storage (documents plus indexes), shared RAM and vCPU
- Up to 3 search or vector indexes
- 100 operations per second, 500 connections
- 10 GB in and 10 GB out per rolling 7 days

**Catch:** 512 MB covers documents plus indexes, throughput is capped at 100 operations per second, there are no backups, and the cluster is paused after 30 days with no connections.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Pinecone free?

Yes, the Starter plan: one project with up to 2 GB of serverless vector storage across 5 indexes, 1M read units and 2M write units a month, and 5M free tokens a month on its hosted embedding models, with no card. It runs on AWS us-east-1 only; beyond the free units you upgrade to Builder ($20 a month flat) or Standard ($50 a month minimum).

### What is the best free alternative to Pinecone?

For the most space, Zilliz: 5 GB of managed Milvus, about 1M 768-dimension vectors. For the simplest swap, Qdrant: a free-forever 1 GB-RAM cluster that serves about 1M 768-dimension vectors. If your app already needs a database, Supabase or Neon give you pgvector inside Postgres at no cost.

### Do any free vector databases delete my data when idle?

Several pause or remove idle projects. Supabase pauses a free project after a week of inactivity, Qdrant suspends an unused cluster after a week and deletes it after four weeks, and MongoDB Atlas pauses an M0 cluster after 30 days without connections. Check the catch on each row before you rely on one.

### Do these Pinecone alternatives need a credit card?

No - none of the eight rows asks for a card. Upstash moves your index to pay-as-you-go if you add one, so leave it off if you want a hard cap.

### How current is this comparison?

Every row is generated from the aifree.dev catalog, whose offers are re-checked monthly. Vector database allowances shift quietly, so a row changes or disappears when the vendor does.

HTML page: https://aifree.dev/compare/free-pinecone-alternatives