---
id: pinecone
version: "9.1.0"
license: Apache-2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# pinecone — Pinecone Python SDK

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 8.1M/mo

## What it is and what it does

Pinecone is a Python client library for interacting with Pinecone's managed vector database service. It handles index creation and lifecycle management, vector upsert operations (with automatic batching), and similarity search queries. The SDK supports both synchronous and asynchronous workflows via AsyncPinecone, making it suitable for both blocking and event-driven applications.

The package abstracts away HTTP transport details through httpx, uses msgspec and orjson for efficient serialization, and implements retry logic with adaptive concurrency control to handle rate limits gracefully. It's designed for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, semantic search, and other AI/ML workflows that rely on vector similarity. Configuration is minimal—typically just an API key and optional host/timeout parameters—and the SDK supports both serverless and managed index specifications.

Use it for:

- Build RAG pipelines that retrieve semantically similar documents or embeddings to augment LLM prompts.
- Implement semantic search features that find similar items (products, articles, images) based on embedding vectors.
- Store and query high-dimensional embeddings from language models or computer vision models at scale.
- Run real-time similarity matching for recommendation systems or personalization engines.
- Integrate vector search into async Python applications using the AsyncPinecone client.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Pinecone Python SDK provides a client for creating and managing vector database indexes, upserting and querying vectors, and running inference operations against the Pinecone vector database service.

Yes. Pinecone is actively maintained (production-stable, recent releases), has no known vulnerabilities, and offers a straightforward API for vector database operations essential to modern AI/ML workflows. Medium install friction is acceptable for the functionality provided. Use it if you need a managed vector database client for RAG, semantic search, or embedding-based retrieval.

## Install

pip install pinecone
uv add pinecone
poetry add pinecone

## Installing pinecone

Before you install: Medium install friction due to compiled wheels for multiple platforms (macOS, Linux, Windows, ARM). Active maintenance with a release 72 days ago and recent commits; production-stable status. Three lightweight runtime dependencies (httpx, msgspec, orjson) add minimal overhead.

License in practice: Apache-2.0 permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; suitable for most projects.

Quickstart:

pip install pinecone

from pinecone import Pinecone, ServerlessSpec

pc = Pinecone(api_key="your-api-key")
pc.indexes.create(
    name="my-index",
    dimension=1536,
    metric="cosine",
    spec=ServerlessSpec(cloud="aws", region="us-east-1"),
)
index = pc.index("my-index")
index.upsert(vectors=[("id-1", [0.1, 0.2, 0.3])])
results = index.query(vector=[0.1, 0.2, 0.3], top_k=10)

Requires Python 3.10 or later. Requires a valid Pinecone API key (set via api_key parameter or PINECONE_API_KEY environment variable).

Verify before relying:

- Performance characteristics under high-volume upsert/query workloads not detailed in fact sheet.
- Retry behavior and adaptive concurrency implementation details beyond what smoke tests verify.

## Package facts

- License: Apache-2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: medium
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 8.1M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

vector database client, pinecone sdk python, semantic search embeddings, vector similarity queries, rag vector storage, ai embeddings management, serverless vector index, vector-search, rag, embeddings

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/pinecone) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/pinecone/)