Understanding Pinecone Inference API

Pinecone Inference is an API that gives you access to embedding and reranking models hosted on Pinecone’s infrastructure.

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Overview

Pinecone Inference is an API that gives you access to models hosted on Pinecone’s infrastructure.

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Prerequisites

To use the Inference API, you need a Pinecone account and a Pinecone API key.

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Models

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Embed

The embed endpoint generates embeddings for text data, such as queries or passages, using a specified embedding model.

The following embedding models are available:

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Rerank

The rerank endpoint takes documents and scores them by their relevance to a query. Rerankers are used to increase retrieval quality as part of two-stage retrieval systems

The following reranking models are available:

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SDK support

You can access the embed and rerank endpoints directly or using a supported Pinecone SDK:

To install the latest SDK version, run the following command:

If you already have an SDK, upgrade to the latest version as follows:

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Rate Limits

Rate limits are in place to ensure fair usage of the Inference API. Rate limits are measured in requests per minute (RPM) and tokens per minute (TPM) and vary based on the model you use and the pricing plan you are on.

Rate limits are defined at the project level.

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Starter plan

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Paid plan

To request a rate increase, contact Support.

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Cost

Inference billing is based on tokens used. To learn more, see Understanding cost.