This page describes different types of limits for Pinecone Database.

Rate limits

Rate limits are restrictions on the frequency of requests within a specified period of time. Rate limits vary based on pricing plan and apply to serverless indexes only.

MetricStarter planStandard planEnterprise plan
Read units per month per project1,000,000N/AN/A
Write units per month per project2,000,000N/AN/A
Upsert size per second per namespace50 MB50 MB50 MB
Query read units per second per index2,0002,0002,000
Update records per second per namespace100100100
Fetch requests per second per index100100100
List requests per second per index200200200
Describe index stats requests per second per index100100100
Delete records per second per namespace5,0005,0005,000
Delete records per second per index5,0005,0005,000

Read units per month per project

This limit applies to organizations on the Starter plan only.
Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
1,000,000N/AN/A

Read units measure the compute, I/O, and network resources used by fetch, query, and list requests to serverless indexes. When you reach the monthly read unit limit for a project, fetch, query, and list requests to serverless indexes in the project will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached your read unit limit for the current month limit. 
To continue reading data, upgrade your plan. 

To continue reading from serverless indexes in the project, upgrade your plan.

To check how close you are to the monthly read unit limit for a project, do the following:

  1. Open the Pinecone console.
  2. Select the project.
  3. Select any index in the project.
  4. Look under Starter Usage.

Write units per month per project

This limit applies to organizations on the Starter plan only.
Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
2,000,000N/AN/A

Write units measure the storage and compute resources used by upsert, update, and delete requests to serverless indexes. When you reach the monthly write unit limit for a project, upsert, update, and delete requests to serverless indexes in the project will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached your write unit limit for the current month. 
To continue writing data, upgrade your plan.

To continue writing data to serverless indexes in the project, upgrade your plan.

To check how close you are to the monthly read unit limit for a project, do the following:

  1. Open the Pinecone console.
  2. Select the project.
  3. Select any index in the project.
  4. Look under Starter Usage.

Upsert size per second per namespace

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
50 MB50 MB50 MB

When you reach the per second upsert size for a namespace in an index, additional upserts will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max upsert size limit per second for index <index name>. 
Pace your upserts or upgrade your plan.

To increase this limit, upgrade your plan. Otherwise, you can handle this limit by automatically retrying requests with an exponential backoff.

Query read units per second per index

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
2,0002,0002,000

Pinecone measures query usage in read units. When you reach the per second limit for queries across all namespaces in an index, additional queries will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max query read units per second for index <index name>. 
Pace your queries.

To handle this limit, automatically retry requests with an exponential backoff.

To check how many read units a query consumes, check the query response.

Update records per second per namespace

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
100100100

When you reach the per second update limit for a namespace in an index, additional updates will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max update records per second for namespace <namespace name>. 
Pace your update requests or upgrade your plan.

To increase this limit, upgrade your plan. Otherwise, you can handle this limit by automatically retrying requests with an exponential backoff.

Fetch requests per second per index

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
100100100

When you reach the per second fetch limit across all namespaces in an index, additional fetch requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max fetch requests per second for index <index name>.
Pace your fetch requests.

To handle this limit, automatically retry requests with an exponential backoff.

List requests per second per index

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
200200200

When you reach the per second list limit across all namespaces in an index, additional list requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max list requests per second for index <index name>.
Pace your list requests.

To handle this limit, automatically retry requests with an exponential backoff.

Describe index stats requests per second per index

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
100100100

When you reach the per second describe index stats limit across all namespaces in an index, additional list requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max describe_index_stats requests per second for index <index>. 
Pace your describe_index_stats requests.

To handle this limit, automatically retry requests with an exponential backoff.

Object limits

Object limits are restrictions on the number or size of objects in Pinecone. Object limits vary based on pricing plan.

MetricStarter planStandard planEnterprise plan
Projects per organization120100
Pods per organization0100100
Serverless indexes per project520200
Serverless index storage per project2 GBN/AN/A
Namespaces per serverless index10025,000100,000
Serverless backups per projectN/A5050
Pod-based indexes per project0N/AN/A
Pods per project 1022
Collections per project100N/AN/A
1 The limit on the number of pods per project can be customized for organizations on Standard and Enterprise plans after creating a project. For more information, see Pods per project.

Projects per organization

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
120100

When you reach this quota for an organization, trying to create projects will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max projects allowed in organization <org name>. 
To add more projects, upgrade your plan.

To increase this quota, upgrade your plan or contact Support.

Pods per organization

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
0100100

When you reach this quota for an organization, trying to create pod-based indexes in any project in the organization will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max pods allowed in organization ORGANIZATION_NAME (LIMIT). To increase this limit, contact support@pinecone.io.

To increase this quota, contact Support](https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket).

Serverless indexes per project

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
520200

When you reach this quota for a project, trying to create serverless indexes in the project will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max serverless indexes allowed in project <project>. 
To add more serverless indexes, upgrade your plan.

To increase this quota, upgrade your plan or contact Support.

Serverless index storage per project

This limit applies to organizations on the Starter plan only.
Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
2 GBN/AN/A

When you’ve reached this quota for a project, updates and upserts into serverless indexes will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max storage allowed for project <project name>. 
To update or upsert new data, delete records or upgrade your plan.

To continue writing data into your serverless indexes, delete records to bring you under the limit or upgrade your plan.

Namespaces per serverless index

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
10025,000100,000

When you reach this quota for a serverless index, trying to upsert records into a new namespace in the index will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max namespaces allowed in serverless index <index name>. To add more namespaces, upgrade your plan.

To increase this quota, upgrade your plan.

These quotas are intended to provide reasonable boundaries and prevent unexpected or unintentional misuse. To increase your quota beyond the standard allotment, contact Support.

Serverless backups per project

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
N/A5050

When you reach this quota for a project, trying to create serverless backups in the project will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Backup failed to create. Quota for number of backups per index exceeded.

Pod-based indexes per project

This limit applies to organizations on the Starter plan only.
Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
0N/AN/A

When you try to create a pod-based index on the Starter plan, the request will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reach the max pod-based indexes allowed in project <project name>. 
To add more pod-based indexes, upgrade your plan.

To create pod-based indexes, upgrade your plan.

Pods per project

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
022

The default limit on the number of pods per project is for organizations on Standard and Enterprise plans. This limit can be customized in the Pinecone console:

  1. Go to Settings > Projects.
  2. For the project you want to update, click the ellipsis (..) menu > Configure.
  3. In the Pod Limit section, update the number of pods.
  4. Click Save Changes.

When you reach this quota for a project, trying to create pod-based indexes in the project will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max pods allowed in project PROJECT_NAME. To increase this limit, adjust your project settings in the console. Contact a project owner if you don't have permission.

Collections per project

Starter planStandard planEnterprise plan
100N/AN/A

When you reach this quota for a project, trying to create collections in the project will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED status with the following error:

Request failed. You've reached the max collections allowed in project <project name>. 
To add more collections, upgrade your plan.

To increase this quota, upgrade your plan.

Operation limits

Operation limits are restrictions on the size, number, or other characteristics of operations in Pinecone. Operation limits are fixed and do not vary based on pricing plan.

Upsert limits

MetricLimit
Max upsert size2MB or 1000 records
Max metadata size per record40 KB
Max length for a record ID512 characters
Max dimensionality for dense vectors20,000
Max non-zero values for sparse vectors1000
Max dimensionality for sparse vectors4.2 billion

When upserting larger amounts of data, it is recommended to upsert records in large batches. A batch of upserts should be as large as possible (up to 1000 records) without exceeding the maximum request size of 2MB.

To understand the number of records you can fit into one batch based on the vector dimensions and metadata size, see the following table:

DimensionMetadata (bytes)Max batch size
38601000
768500559
15362000245

Query limits

MetricLimit
Max top_k value10,000
Max result size4MB

The query result size is affected by the dimension of the dense vectors and whether or not dense vector values and metadata are included in the result.

If a query fails due to exceeding the 4MB result size limit, choose a lower top_k value, or use include_metadata=False or include_values=False to exclude metadata or values from the result.

Fetch limits

Limit
Max records per fetch request1,000

Delete limits

DeleteLimit
Max records per delete request1,000

Identifier limits

An identifier is a string of characters (up to 255 characters in length) used to identify “named” objects in Pinecone. The following Pinecone objects use strings as identifiers:

ObjectFieldMax # charactersAllowed characters
Organizationname512UTF-8 except \0
Projectname512UTF-8 except \0
Indexname45A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and -
Namespacenamespace512ASCII except \0
Recordid512ASCII except \0