> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.pinecone.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Understanding collections

> Legacy documentation for Pinecone collections, a pod-only feature for creating static index snapshots. Collections aren't available for serverless indexes.

> [!WARNING]
>
> Pod-based indexes are legacy. Customers who signed up for a Standard or Enterprise plan on or after August 18, 2025 cannot create them. [Create a serverless index](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/indexes/create-an-index.md) instead. Serverless indexes use on-demand read capacity by default, or [dedicated read nodes](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/optimize/dedicated-read-nodes/overview.md) for sustained high query rates and workloads of millions of records or more.

> [!NOTE]
>
> SDKs that target API version `2026-07` don't support creating pod-based indexes, and they reject creating an index from a collection. You can still list, describe, and delete existing collections. To create or restore a pod-based index, use an [SDK version](https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/pinecone-sdks.md#sdk-versions) that targets an earlier API version, or send an earlier `X-Pinecone-Api-Version` with the REST API. To move a pod-based index to serverless, see [Migrate a pod-based index to serverless](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/legacy/pod-based-indexes/migrate-a-pod-based-index-to-serverless.md).

A collection is a static copy of a pod-based index that only consumes storage. It's a non-queryable representation of a set of records. You can [create a collection](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/legacy/pod-based-indexes/back-up-a-pod-based-index.md) of a pod-based index, and you can [create a new pod-based index from a collection](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/legacy/pod-based-indexes/restore-a-pod-based-index.md). This allows you to restore the index with the same or different configurations.

> [!NOTE]
>
> Once a collection is created, it can't be moved to a different project.

## Use cases

Creating a collection is useful when performing tasks like the following:

* Protecting an index from manual or system failures.
* Temporarily shutting down an index.
* Copying the data from one index into a different index.
* Making a backup of your index.
* Experimenting with different index configurations.

## Performance

Collections operations perform differently, depending on the pod type of the index:

* Creating a `p1` or `s1` index from a collection takes approximately 10 minutes.
* Creating a `p2` index from a collection can take several hours when the number of vectors is on the order of 1,000,000.

## Limitations

Collection limitations are as follows:

* You can only perform operations on collections in the current Pinecone project.

## Pricing

See [Pricing](https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/) for up-to-date pricing information.