This page describes different types of limits for Pinecone Database.
Rate limits
Rate limits help protect your applications from misuse and maintain the health of our shared serverless infrastructure. These limits are designed to support typical production workloads while ensuring reliable performance for all users.
Most rate limits can be adjusted upon request. If you need higher limits to scale your application, contact Support with details about your use case. Pinecone is committed to supporting your growth and can often accommodate higher throughput requirements.
Rate limits vary based on pricing plan and apply to serverless indexes only.
Metric | Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
Read units per month per project | 1,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Write units per month per project | 2,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Upsert size per second per namespace | 50 MB | 50 MB | 50 MB |
Query read units per second per index | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
Update records per second per namespace | 100 | 100 | 100 |
Update by metadata requests per second per namespace | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Update by metadata requests per second per index | 500 | 500 | 500 |
Fetch requests per second per index | 100 | 100 | 100 |
List requests per second per index | 200 | 200 | 200 |
Describe index stats requests per second per index | 100 | 100 | 100 |
Delete records per second per namespace | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
Delete records per second per index | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
Delete by metadata requests per second per namespace | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Delete by metadata requests per second per index | 500 | 500 | 500 |
Embedding tokens per minute per model | Model-specific | Model-specific | Model-specific |
Embedding tokens per month per model | 5,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Rerank requests per minute per model | Model-specific | Model-specific | Model-specific |
Rerank requests per month per model | 500 | Model-specific | Model-specific |
Read units per month per project
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
1,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
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:
- Open the Pinecone console.
- Select the project.
- Select any index in the project.
- Look under Starter Usage.
Write units per month per project
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
2,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
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:
- Open the Pinecone console.
- Select the project.
- Select any index in the project.
- Look under Starter Usage.
Upsert size per second per namespace
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
50 MB | 50 MB | 50 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 contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Query read units per second per index
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
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 or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
To check how many read units a query consumes, check the query response.
Update records per second per namespace
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
100 | 100 | 100 |
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 contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
5 | 5 | 5 |
When you reach the per second update by metadata request limit for a namespace in an index, additional update by metadata requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max update by metadata requests per second for namespace <namespace name>. Pace your update by metadata requests or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
500 | 500 | 500 |
When you reach the per second update by metadata request limit across all namespaces in an index, additional update by metadata requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max update by metadata requests per second for index <index name>. Pace your update by metadata requests or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Fetch requests per second per index
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
100 | 100 | 100 |
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 or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
List requests per second per index
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
200 | 200 | 200 |
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 or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Describe index stats requests per second per index
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
100 | 100 | 100 |
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 or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Delete records per second per namespace
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
5000 | 5000 | 5000 |
When you reach the per second delete limit for a namespace in an index, additional deletes will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max delete records per second for namespace <namespace name>.
Pace your delete requests or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Delete records per second per index
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
5000 | 5000 | 5000 |
When you reach the per second delete limit across all namespaces in an index, additional deletes will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max delete records per second for index <index name>.
Pace your delete requests or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
5 | 5 | 5 |
When you reach the per second delete by metadata request limit for a namespace in an index, additional delete by metadata requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max delete by metadata requests per second for namespace <namespace name>. Pace your delete by metadata requests or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
500 | 500 | 500 |
When you reach the per second delete by metadata request limit across all namespaces in an index, additional delete by metadata requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max delete by metadata requests per second for index <index name>. Pace your delete by metadata requests or contact Pinecone Support (https://app.pinecone.io/organizations/-/settings/support/ticket) to request a higher limit.
To handle this limit, implement retry logic with exponential backoff. If you need a higher limit for your use case, contact Support.
Embedding tokens per minute per model
Embedding model | Input type | Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
llama-text-embed-v2 | Passage | 250,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Query | 50,000 | 250,000 | 250,000 |
multilingual-e5-large | Passage | 250,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Query | 50,000 | 250,000 | 250,000 |
pinecone-sparse-english-v0 | Passage | 250,000 | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Query | 250,000 | 3,000,000 | 3,000,000 |
When you reach the per minute token limit for an embedding model hosted by Pinecone, additional embeddings will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max embedding tokens per minute (<limit>) model '<model name>'' and input type '<passage|query>' for the current project.
To increase this limit, upgrade your plan.
To increase this limit, upgrade your plan. Otherwise, you can handle this limit by implementing retry logic with exponential backoff.
Embedding tokens per month per model
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
5,000,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
When you reach the monthly token limit for an embedding model hosted by Pinecone, additional embeddings will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the embedding token limit (<limit>) for model <model name> for the current month.
To continue using this model, upgrade your plan.
To increase this limit, upgrade your plan or contact Support.
Rerank requests per minute per model
Reranking model | Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
cohere-rerank-3.5 | Not available | 300 | 300 |
bge-reranker-v2-m3 | 60 | 60 | 60 |
pinecone-rerank-v0 | 60 | 60 | 60 |
When you reach the per minute request limit for a reranking model hosted by Pinecone, additional reranking requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the max rerank requests per minute (<limit>) for model '<model name>' for the current project.
To increase this limit, upgrade your plan.
To increase this limit, upgrade your plan.
Rerank requests per month per model
Reranking model | Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
cohere-rerank-3.5 | Not available | Unlimited | Unlimited |
bge-reranker-v2-m3 | 500 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
pinecone-rerank-v0 | 500 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
When you reach the monthly request limit for a reranking model hosted by Pinecone, additional reranking requests will fail and return a 429 - TOO_MANY_REQUESTS
status with the following error:
Request failed. You've reached the rerank request limit (<limit>) for model <model name> for the current month.
To continue using this model, upgrade your plan.
To increase this limit, upgrade your plan or contact Support.
Object limits
Object limits are restrictions on the number or size of objects in Pinecone. Object limits vary based on pricing plan.
1 On the Starter plan, all serverless must be in the us-east-1
region of AWS.
Projects per organization
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
1 | 20 | 100 |
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.
Serverless indexes per project
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
5 | 20 | 200 |
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>.
Use namespaces to partition your data into logical groups, or upgrade your plan to add more serverless indexes.
To stay under this quota, consider using namespaces instead of creating multiple indexes. Namespaces let you partition your data into logical groups within a single index. This approach not only helps you stay within index limits, but can also improve query performance and lower costs by limiting searches to relevant data subsets.
To increase this quota, upgrade your plan.
Serverless index storage per project
This limit applies to organizations on the Starter plan only.
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
2 GB | N/A | N/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 your project under the limit or upgrade your plan.
Namespaces per serverless index
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
100 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
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.
While the Standard and Enterprise plans support up to 100,000 namespaces per index, Pinecone can accommodate million-scale namespaces and beyond for specific use cases. If your application requires more than 100,000 namespaces, contact Support.
Serverless backups per project
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
N/A | 500 | 1000 |
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.
Namespaces per serverless backup
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
N/A | 2000 | 2000 |
When you reach this quota for a backup, trying to create serverless backups will fail and return a 403 - QUOTA_EXCEEDED
status.
Collections per project
Starter plan | Standard plan | Enterprise plan |
---|
100 | N/A | N/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
Metric | Limit |
---|
Max batch size | 2 MB or 1000 records with vectors 96 records with text |
Max metadata size per record | 40 KB |
Max length for a record ID | 512 characters |
Max dimensionality for dense vectors | 20,000 |
Max non-zero values for sparse vectors | 2048 |
Max dimensionality for sparse vectors | 4.2 billion |
Import limits
If your import exceeds these limits, you’ll get an Exceeds system limit
error. Pinecone can help unblock these imports quickly. Contact Pinecone support for assistance.
Metric | Limit |
---|
Max namespaces per import | 10,000 |
Max size per namespace | 500 GB |
Max files per import | 100,000 |
Max size per file | 10 GB |
Query limits
Metric | Limit |
---|
Max top_k value | 10,000 |
Max result size | 4MB |
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
Metric | Limit |
---|
Max record IDs per fetch request | 1,000 |
Delete limits
Metric | Limit |
---|
Max record IDs per delete request | 1,000 |
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:
Object | Field | Max # characters | Allowed characters |
---|
Organization | name | 512 | UTF-8 except \0 |
Project | name | 512 | UTF-8 except \0 |
Index | name | 45 | A-Z , a-z , 0-9 , and - |
Namespace | namespace | 512 | ASCII except \0 |
Record | id | 512 | ASCII except \0 |