Pinecone launches $20 Builder plan with 1M token promo offer
What happened
Between the May 4, 2026 and May 11, 2026 captures of Pinecone's pricing page, Pulse recorded 3 changes: New Builder plan launched at $20/month flat for solo developers and small teams, sitting between Starter and Standard. Includes increased usage limits, multi-cloud (coming soon), and Free support; Starter plan reranking models access restricted from 'All except cohere-rerank-3.5' to 'bge-reranker-v2-m3 only', removing access to pinecone-rerank-v0 for Starter users; Limited-time promotional offer added for Starter plan: input tokens temporarily increased from 500k/mo to 1M/mo until June 30, 2026, with link to Pinecone Marketplace. Pulse files it as a pricing change (new plan, feature change, discount added) with an upward direction. Pulse's latest capture (Oct 3, 2026) lists Builder at $20, Standard at $4 Write Units (M) + $0.15 Restore from Backup (GB), Enterprise at $0.1 GB egress per month + $500 subscription, HIPAA Compliance at $190 and Developer Support at $29.
It lands 29 days after Pinecone's previous change, "Pinecone Shifts to Region-Variable Pricing for Database Operations" (Apr 14, 2026). Before that Pulse recorded "Pinecone lifts assistant document caps" (Apr 6, 2026), "Pinecone Downgrades BYOC Support Tier, Rebrands as Cloud-Native Option" (Apr 3, 2026) and "Pinecone launches HIPAA compliance add-on at $190/month" (Feb 24, 2026). Pinecone has been tracked since 2023-12-22.
In the same window Zilliz and Qdrant also changed their Data & Analytics pricing pages. Those moves are listed further down, and the Pulse Agent can compare them side by side.
- Builder, Starter, Standard · PlanAddedNo Builder planBuilder plan
- Starter · FeatureReworded
BeforeAll except cohere-rerank-3.5
Afterbge-reranker-v2-m3 only
- Starter · Discount+100%500k/mo1M/mo
| Plan | Field | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Builder, Starter, Standard | Plan | No Builder plan | Builder plan | Added |
| Starter | Feature | All except cohere-rerank-3.5 | bge-reranker-v2-m3 only | Reworded |
| Starter | Discount | 500k/mo | 1M/mo | +100% |
Values as written on Pinecone's public pricing page in the two captures Pulse compared; where the page states no number, the cells give the wording before and after.
Evidence
The two captures Pulse comparedFull-page captures of Pinecone's pricing page (pinecone.io) from May 4, 2026 and May 11, 2026; the change is marked near the top of the page, where Builder plan now appears.
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Pinecone, the last 90 days
Full history- Jul 17, 2026improvedPinecone: Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) added to Enterprise plan
- Jul 6, 2026packagingPinecone adds egress pricing: $0.10/GB overage past 100GB on top plans
- Jun 9, 2026improvedPinecone slashes storage costs 75%, expands Builder to multi-cloud
- May 12, 2026improvedPinecone launches $20 Builder plan with 1M token promo offer · this change
- Apr 14, 2026packagingPinecone Shifts to Region-Variable Pricing for Database Operations
- Apr 6, 2026packagingPinecone lifts assistant document caps
- Apr 3, 2026improvedPinecone Downgrades BYOC Support Tier, Rebrands as Cloud-Native Option
- Feb 24, 2026packagingPinecone launches HIPAA compliance add-on at $190/month
Across Data & Analytics in the same window
All Data & Analytics changes- ZillizMay 13Zilliz raises dedicated plan prices 27%, adds on-demand compute tier
- QdrantApr 24Qdrant Splits Premium SLA into Single and Multi-AZ Uptime Tiers
- QdrantApr 13Qdrant Adds GPU Indexing and CLI Automation Across All Tiers
- QdrantApr 3Qdrant launches three-tier cloud pricing with free inference models
- QdrantMar 17Qdrant moves to usage-based tiers with free AI inference tokens
Questions about this change
Did Pinecone raise prices in May 2026?
No list-price increase was recorded between May 4, 2026 and May 11, 2026. The change Pulse detected was a pricing change: new plan, feature change, discount added.
What changed on Pinecone's pricing page between May 4, 2026 and May 11, 2026?
Builder, Starter, Standard plan: No Builder plan → Builder plan, added; Starter feature: All except cohere-rerank-3.5 → bge-reranker-v2-m3 only, reworded; Starter discount: 500k/mo → 1M/mo (+100%). Pulse compared the captures it took on May 4, 2026 and May 11, 2026; the before/after table above lists each item as written on the page.
How often does Pinecone change its pricing?
Pulse recorded 4 other pricing-page changes for Pinecone in the 90 days before this one; the previous change was "Pinecone Shifts to Region-Variable Pricing for Database Operations" on Apr 14, 2026; Pinecone has been tracked since 2023-12-22.