> ## 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. # Create a backup of an index > Create a backup of an index. The backup records the schema of the index it is taken from and reports it as `schema`. An index created from the backup with [Create index from backup](https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/2026-07/control-plane/create_index_from_backup) inherits that schema. ```bash curl theme={null} PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY" INDEX_NAME="docs-example" curl "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/$INDEX_NAME/backups" \ -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \ -H 'accept: application/json' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07" \ -d '{ "name": "example-backup", "description": "Monthly backup of production index" }' ``` ## OpenAPI ````yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pinecone-io/pinecone-api/refs/heads/main/2026-07/db_control_2026-07.oas.yaml post /indexes/{index_name}/backups openapi: 3.0.3 info: title: Pinecone Control Plane API description: >- Pinecone is a vector database that makes it easy to search and retrieve billions of high-dimensional vectors. contact: name: Pinecone Support url: https://support.pinecone.io email: support@pinecone.io license: name: Apache 2.0 url: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 version: 2026-07 servers: - url: https://api.pinecone.io description: Production API endpoints security: - ApiKeyAuth: [] tags: - name: Manage Indexes description: Actions that manage indexes externalDocs: description: More Pinecone.io API docs url: https://docs.pinecone.io/introduction paths: /indexes/{index_name}/backups: post: tags: - Manage Indexes summary: Create a backup of an index description: > Create a backup of an index. The backup records the schema of the index it is taken from and reports it as `schema`. An index created from the backup with [Create index from backup](https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/2026-07/control-plane/create_index_from_backup) inherits that schema. operationId: create_backup parameters: - in: header name: X-Pinecone-Api-Version description: Required date-based version header required: true schema: default: 2026-07 type: string style: simple - in: path name: index_name description: Name of the index to backup required: true schema: type: string style: simple requestBody: description: The desired configuration for the backup. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/CreateBackupRequest' examples: backup-index-no-name: summary: Creating a backup of an index with no name value: {} backup-index-with-name: summary: Creating a backup of an index with a name value: name: backup-index backup-index-with-name-and-description: summary: Creating a backup of an index with a name and description value: description: Backup of the index name: backup-index required: true responses: '200': description: >- The backup was created. The returned backup starts in status `Initializing`; poll it until the status is `Ready`. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/BackupModel' '400': description: Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ErrorResponse' examples: index-metric-validation-error: summary: Validation error value: error: code: INVALID_ARGUMENT message: >- Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters. status: 400 '401': description: 'Unauthorized. Possible causes: missing or invalid API key.' content: text/plain: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/UnauthorizedMessage' '403': description: >- Forbidden. Possible causes: the organization's plan does not include backups, or the project's backup quota is exhausted. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ErrorResponse' examples: quota-exceeded: summary: Backup quota exhausted value: error: code: FORBIDDEN message: Increase your quota or upgrade to create more backups. status: 403 plan-does-not-include-backups: summary: Plan does not include backups value: error: code: PERMISSION_DENIED message: >- Your organization's plan does not include backups. Upgrade your plan to create backups. status: 403 '422': description: Unprocessable entity. The request body could not be deserialized. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ErrorResponse' examples: missing-field: summary: Unprocessable entity value: error: code: UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY message: >- Failed to deserialize the JSON body into the target type: missing field `metric` at line 1 column 16 status: 422 '500': description: Internal server error. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ErrorResponse' examples: internal-server-error: summary: Internal server error value: error: code: UNKNOWN message: Internal server error status: 500 components: schemas: CreateBackupRequest: description: The configuration needed to create a backup of an index. type: object properties: name: example: backup-2025-03-15 description: >- The name of the backup. Must be 1-45 characters long, start and end with an alphanumeric character, and consist only of lower case alphanumeric characters or `-`; any other value is rejected with `400`. type: string minLength: 1 maxLength: 45 description: description: A description of the backup. type: string BackupModel: description: >- The BackupModel describes the configuration and status of a Pinecone backup. type: object properties: backup_id: example: 670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440001 description: Unique identifier for the backup. type: string source_index_name: example: my-index description: Name of the index from which the backup was taken. type: string source_index_id: example: 670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000 description: ID of the index from which the backup was taken. type: string source_index_deleted_at: example: '2024-03-05T12:00:00.000Z' description: >- The deletion timestamp when the source index has been deleted. Not present for backups associated with an active index. type: string format: date-time name: example: backup-2025-02-04 description: Optional user-defined name for the backup. type: string description: example: Backup before bulk update. description: Optional description providing context for the backup. type: string status: example: Ready description: Current status of the backup. x-enum: - Initializing - Ready - InitializationFailed type: string cloud: example: aws description: Cloud provider where the backup is stored. type: string region: example: us-east-1 description: Cloud region where the backup is stored. type: string schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/IndexSchema' record_count: example: 120000 description: Total number of records in the backup. type: integer format: int64 namespace_count: example: 3 description: Number of namespaces in the backup. type: integer format: int64 size_bytes: example: 10000000 description: Size of the backup in bytes. type: integer format: int64 tags: $ref: '#/components/schemas/IndexTags' created_at: example: '2025-02-04T10:30:00.000Z' description: Timestamp when the backup was created. type: string format: date-time required: - backup_id - source_index_name - source_index_id - status - cloud - region ErrorResponse: example: error: code: INVALID_ARGUMENT message: >- Index name must contain only lowercase alphanumeric characters or hyphens, and must not begin or end with a hyphen. status: 400 description: The response shape used for all error responses. type: object properties: status: example: 500 description: The HTTP status code of the error. type: integer error: example: code: INVALID_ARGUMENT message: >- Index name must contain only lowercase alphanumeric characters or hyphens, and must not begin or end with a hyphen. description: Detailed information about the error that occurred. type: object properties: code: description: >- The error code. Possible values: `OK`, `UNKNOWN`, `INVALID_ARGUMENT`, `DEADLINE_EXCEEDED`, `NOT_FOUND`, `ALREADY_EXISTS`, `PERMISSION_DENIED`, `UNAUTHENTICATED`, `RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED`, `FAILED_PRECONDITION`, `ABORTED`, `OUT_OF_RANGE`, `INTERNAL`, `FORBIDDEN`, `PAYMENT_REQUIRED`, `SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE`, `PAYLOAD_TOO_LARGE`, or `UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY`. x-enum: - OK - UNKNOWN - INVALID_ARGUMENT - DEADLINE_EXCEEDED - NOT_FOUND - ALREADY_EXISTS - PERMISSION_DENIED - UNAUTHENTICATED - RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED - FAILED_PRECONDITION - ABORTED - OUT_OF_RANGE - INTERNAL - FORBIDDEN - PAYMENT_REQUIRED - SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE - PAYLOAD_TOO_LARGE - UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY type: string message: example: >- Index name must contain only lowercase alphanumeric characters or hyphens, and must not begin or end with a hyphen. description: A human-readable description of the error type: string details: description: >- Additional information about the error. This field is not guaranteed to be present. type: object required: - code - message required: - status - error UnauthorizedMessage: example: Invalid API key description: >- The plain-text body of a `401` response. Authentication failures are rejected before the request reaches the API, so they carry a short message rather than an `ErrorResponse`. type: string IndexSchema: example: fields: embedding: dimension: 1536 metric: cosine type: dense_vector title: full_text_search: language: en stemming: false stop_words: false type: string description: >- The schema of a Pinecone index. The schema defines the typed fields that documents in the index can contain, including vector fields, semantic text fields, and metadata fields. type: object properties: fields: description: >- A map of field names to their configurations. Indexes that are served by the vectors API — created with the reserved `_values` / `_sparse_values` schema, or created by an earlier API version from `dimension`, `metric`, and `vector_type` — report their vector fields under the reserved names `_values` (dense) and `_sparse_values` (sparse), and any metadata fields configured for filtering as legacy fields carrying only `filterable`. Dense vectors-API indexes always report both `_values` and `_sparse_values`, regardless of how they were created. type: object additionalProperties: $ref: '#/components/schemas/IndexSchemaField' required: - fields IndexTags: nullable: true example: tag0: val0 tag1: val1 description: >- Custom user tags added to an index, at most 20 per index. Keys must be 80 characters or less and alphanumeric, '_', or '-'. Values must be 120 characters or less and consist of printable ASCII characters or spaces. To unset a key, set the value to be an empty string. `null` in responses when the index has no tags. type: object additionalProperties: type: string IndexSchemaField: description: >- The configuration of a single field in the index schema. Most fields carry a `type` property that identifies the field type: - `dense_vector`: Fixed-dimension floating-point vectors for ANN search. - `sparse_vector`: Sparse vectors for keyword or hybrid search. - `semantic_text`: Text field backed by an integrated embedding model. - `string`: String field for full-text search or metadata filtering. - `string_list`: String array field. - `float`: Numeric field. - `integer`: Legacy numeric field from older indexes (pre-dating float normalization). Will not appear in new indexes. - `boolean`: Boolean field. Fields in older indexes may omit `type` entirely. These are legacy metadata fields from before typed schemas were introduced. anyOf: - $ref: '#/components/schemas/TypedIndexSchemaField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/LegacyMetadataField' TypedIndexSchemaField: title: Typed field description: >- A schema field that carries a `type` discriminator. This covers all field types in current use. See `IndexSchemaField` for the full union that also includes legacy untyped fields. discriminator: propertyName: type mapping: dense_vector: $ref: '#/components/schemas/DenseVectorField' sparse_vector: $ref: '#/components/schemas/SparseVectorField' semantic_text: $ref: '#/components/schemas/SemanticTextField' string: $ref: '#/components/schemas/ResponseStringField' string_list: $ref: '#/components/schemas/StringListField' float: $ref: '#/components/schemas/FloatField' integer: $ref: '#/components/schemas/IntegerField' boolean: $ref: '#/components/schemas/BooleanField' oneOf: - $ref: '#/components/schemas/DenseVectorField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/SparseVectorField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/SemanticTextField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/ResponseStringField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/StringListField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/FloatField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/IntegerField' - $ref: '#/components/schemas/BooleanField' LegacyMetadataField: example: filterable: true title: Legacy metadata description: >- A legacy metadata field from indexes created before typed schema fields were introduced. The original data type of the field (string, float, boolean, etc.) was not recorded. Only the `filterable` flag is available. This field type will not appear in new indexes; it may appear in responses for older indexes pending schema migration. type: object properties: filterable: description: Whether this field is indexed for metadata filtering. type: boolean required: - filterable additionalProperties: false DenseVectorField: example: dimension: 1536 metric: cosine type: dense_vector title: Dense vector description: >- A dense vector field configuration. Stores fixed-dimension floating-point vectors for approximate nearest-neighbor (ANN) search. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a dense vector field. Must be `dense_vector`. type: string enum: - dense_vector description: nullable: true description: >- Optional description for this field, at most 256 bytes. `null` in responses when none was set. type: string maxLength: 256 dimension: example: 1536 description: The number of dimensions in the dense vectors stored in this field. type: integer format: int32 minimum: 1 maximum: 20000 metric: example: cosine description: |- The distance metric used for similarity search. Possible values: `cosine`, `dotproduct`, or `euclidean`. x-enum: - cosine - dotproduct - euclidean type: string required: - type - dimension - metric SparseVectorField: example: type: sparse_vector title: Sparse vector description: >- A sparse vector field configuration. Stores sparse vectors for keyword or hybrid search. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a sparse vector field. Must be `sparse_vector`. type: string enum: - sparse_vector description: nullable: true description: >- Optional description for this field, at most 256 bytes. `null` in responses when none was set. type: string maxLength: 256 required: - type SemanticTextField: example: model: multilingual-e5-large type: semantic_text title: Semantic text description: >- A semantic text field, as returned when describing an index created with an integrated embedding model. Backed by an integrated embedding model that embeds text at write and query time, enabling semantic similarity search without separate embedding calls. Cannot be declared when creating an index; use the create-for-model operation. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a semantic text field. Must be `semantic_text`. type: string enum: - semantic_text description: nullable: true description: >- Optional description for this field, at most 256 bytes. `null` in responses when none was set. type: string maxLength: 256 model: example: multilingual-e5-large description: The name of the integrated embedding model to use for this field. type: string dimension: nullable: true example: 1024 description: >- The dimension of the vectors the model produces. `null` for models that produce sparse vectors. type: integer format: int32 metric: example: cosine description: >- The distance metric used for similarity search. Defaults to the model's preferred metric if not specified. Possible values: `cosine`, `dotproduct`, or `euclidean`. x-enum: - cosine - dotproduct - euclidean type: string write_parameters: nullable: true example: input_type: passage description: >- Model-specific parameters applied at write time, such as `input_type`. type: object read_parameters: nullable: true example: input_type: query description: >- Model-specific parameters applied at query time, such as `input_type`. type: object required: - type - model ResponseStringField: example: full_text_search: language: en stemming: false stop_words: false type: string title: String description: >- A string field as returned in index schema responses. String fields configured for full-text search include a `full_text_search` object; string fields used for metadata filtering only include a `filterable` flag. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a string field. Must be `string`. type: string enum: - string description: nullable: true description: Optional description for this field. `null` when none was set. type: string full_text_search: description: >- Full-text search configuration. Present when the field is indexed for full-text search. type: object properties: language: example: en description: The language used for text analysis. Defaults to `en`. default: en type: string stemming: description: Whether stemming is applied during text analysis. type: boolean stop_words: description: >- Whether stop words are filtered during text analysis. Only `true` if `stemming: true`. type: boolean ngram: description: >- Character n-gram tokenization configuration. Present only when the field is configured for n-gram substring matching. type: object properties: min_gram: example: 2 description: Minimum n-gram length. type: integer max_gram: example: 3 description: Maximum n-gram length. type: integer prefix_only: description: >- Whether only prefix n-grams anchored at the start of the token are generated. type: boolean required: - min_gram - max_gram - prefix_only additionalProperties: false required: - language - stemming - stop_words additionalProperties: false filterable: description: Whether this field is indexed for metadata filtering. type: boolean required: - type StringListField: example: filterable: true type: string_list title: String array description: >- A string array field configuration. String array values are not declared in the index schema; include them as document metadata instead — they are indexed automatically at upsert time. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a string array field. Must be `string_list`. type: string enum: - string_list description: nullable: true description: Optional description for this field. `null` when none was set. type: string filterable: description: Whether this field is indexed for metadata filtering. type: boolean required: - type FloatField: example: type: float title: Float description: >- A numeric (floating-point) field configuration. Numeric values are not declared in the index schema; include them as document metadata instead — they are indexed automatically at upsert time. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a float field. Must be `float`. type: string enum: - float description: nullable: true description: Optional description for this field. `null` when none was set. type: string filterable: description: Whether this field is indexed for metadata filtering. type: boolean required: - type IntegerField: example: filterable: true type: integer title: Integer description: >- A legacy integer field configuration. Integer fields were used in older index schemas before numeric values were normalized to `float` at upsert time. New indexes will not produce this field type; it may appear in responses for indexes created before that normalization was introduced. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as an integer field. Must be `integer`. type: string enum: - integer description: nullable: true description: Optional description for this field. `null` when none was set. type: string filterable: description: Whether this field is indexed for metadata filtering. type: boolean required: - type BooleanField: example: type: boolean title: Boolean description: >- A boolean field configuration. Boolean values are not declared in the index schema; include them as document metadata instead — they are indexed automatically at upsert time. type: object properties: type: description: Identifies this as a boolean field. Must be `boolean`. type: string enum: - boolean description: nullable: true description: Optional description for this field. `null` when none was set. type: string filterable: description: Whether this field is indexed for metadata filtering. type: boolean required: - type securitySchemes: ApiKeyAuth: type: apiKey in: header name: Api-Key description: >- An API Key is required to call Pinecone APIs. Get yours from the [console](https://app.pinecone.io/). ````