Pinecone API vs Qdrant Cloud
Free API comparison
| Pinecone API | Qdrant Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Embeddings and reranking | Embeddings and reranking |
| API key | Needed, free | Needed, free |
| Pricing | Free on the Starter plan: up to 2 GB storage, 1 million read units and 2 million write units a month, 5 million embedding tokens a month per hosted model and 500 rerank requests a month. | Free forever: one cluster with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB disk and free small embedding models, no credit card needed; unused free clusters are suspended after a week and deleted after four weeks. |
| From the browser | Yes (CORS) | Not stated |
| Formats | JSON | JSON |
| Interface | REST, MCP | REST, MCP |
| Provider | docs.pinecone.io | qdrant.tech |
| MCP server | Yes, official | Yes, official |
Which one to choose
Both are vector databases with a free plan and an official MCP server. Pinecone's Starter plan includes 2 GB of storage plus hosted embedding and reranking models with monthly allowances. Qdrant Cloud gives one free cluster with 1 GB RAM and 4 GB disk, and Qdrant is open source, so you can also run it yourself; an unused free cluster is suspended after a week. For embeddings and search in one place, Pinecone; to keep the option of self-hosting, Qdrant.
Each service's own page has its full description, a code example and what visitors report: Pinecone API, Qdrant Cloud.