Devtoolwatch BoardPinecone SDK review
Pinecone SDK is the official Python client for the Pinecone vector database, used to manage indexes, upsert and query records, and run inference.
TL;DR
Pinecone SDK is the official Python client for the Pinecone vector database. It is for Python developers building vector search or RAG applications on Pinecone. Version 10 uses schema-based document indexes, and version 10.1.0 lets Pinecone embed text fields for you.
- 456GitHub stars
- +2new stars, week of Oct 25
- ~2.1Mdownloads a week, +6% vs 4-week avg
- #29in RAG, data and memory this week
Pinecone SDK at a glance
- Category
- RAG, data and memory
- Maintained by
- Pinecone (organization, @pinecone-io on GitHub)
- License
- Apache 2.0
- Language
- Python, Rust, Shell
- Repository
- github.com/pinecone-io/python-sdk
- Website
- pinecone-io.github.io/python-sdk
- npm package
- @pinecone-database/pinecone 9.1.0
- PyPI package
- pinecone 10.1.0
- Latest release
- v10.1.0 on GitHub, Oct 20, 2026
- First published
- Sep 16, 2021
What Pinecone SDK does
- Pinecone SDK creates and manages indexes, upserts and queries records, and runs inference operations from Python.
- Pinecone SDK declares index fields as a schema, making a document index where each record is a JSON document with fields you name.
- Pinecone SDK searches documents by comparing a query vector against a named field, returning matches with IDs and scores.
- Pinecone SDK can have Pinecone embed text when a string field is marked embed=True or sparse_embed=True.
- Pinecone SDK provides an async client, AsyncPinecone, for use with asyncio.
- Pinecone SDK retries throttled requests with decorrelated jitter and automatic per-host concurrency back-off, and raises RateLimitError for throttling.
How it works
Pinecone SDK is a Python library you install with pip. You create a Pinecone client with an API key, then create an index with a schema and a managed deployment such as AWS us-east-1. You get a data-plane handle with pc.index() and read and write through index.documents. Version 10 targets the Pinecone 2026-07 API.
How to install and start using Pinecone SDK
With pip
pip install pineconeRequirements
- Python 3.10 or later; version 10.0.0 runs on Python 3.10 through 3.14.
- A Pinecone API key, passed directly or set in PINECONE_API_KEY.
First steps
- Create a client with Pinecone(api_key="your-api-key") or set the PINECONE_API_KEY environment variable.
- Create an index with pc.indexes.create, passing a name, a schema of fields, and a deployment.
- Get a handle with pc.index("movie-recommendations") and upsert documents, each with an _id, through index.documents.upsert.
- Query with index.documents.search, using score_by with a DenseVectorQuery on your vector field.
Who Pinecone SDK is for
- Python developers building RAG or vector search applications on the Pinecone vector database.
- Asyncio-based Python services that need an async vector database client.
- Bulk upsert workloads that need throttling-aware retries and concurrency back-off.
Limitations to know
- Upserts apply asynchronously, so a document may not appear in the next search immediately.
- Version 10 has breaking changes: create and configure moved from spec=/dimension= to schema=/deployment=.
- Older indexes use different interfaces: index.upsert/index.query or the legacy Records API, depending on how the index was created.
Is Pinecone SDK growing? Usage data
In the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, Pinecone SDK ranked #288 on the Devtoolwatch Board and #29 in RAG, data and memory, with a momentum score of 33 out of 100. Its main package had about 2.1M downloads that week, +6% against its own 4-week average.
Show the weekly numbers
| Week of | New stars |
|---|---|
| Aug 9, 2026 | 0 |
| Aug 16, 2026 | 0 |
| Aug 23, 2026 | 0 |
| Aug 30, 2026 | 0 |
| Sep 6, 2026 | 1 |
| Sep 13, 2026 | 1 |
| Sep 20, 2026 | 2 |
| Sep 27, 2026 | 1 |
| Oct 4, 2026 | 0 |
| Oct 11, 2026 | 0 |
| Oct 18, 2026 | 1 |
| Oct 25, 2026 | 2 |
The Board ranks tools by four signals each week: new stars, new stars for the repo's size, added downloads and download growth beyond the market. How the ranking works.
Pinecone SDK alternatives
Other RAG, data and memory tools on the Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum:
| Rank | Tool | Stars | Downloads/wk |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | XERJXERJ is a local-first search engine and MCP server for AI agents, packaged as one Rust binary with an Elasticsearch-compatible API. | 17.9k | – |
| #2 | MemvidMemvid is a single-file memory layer for AI agents that packages data, embeddings, search indexes, and metadata into one portable .mv2 file. | 17.3k | – |
| #3 | LEANNLEANN is a Python vector database and RAG library that recomputes embeddings on demand to keep indexes small on personal devices. | 13.7k | – |
| #4 | GraphifyGraphify is an AI coding assistant skill that turns a codebase, with its docs, PDFs, images and videos, into a queryable knowledge graph. | 140k | 480.7k |
| #5 | MarkItDownMarkItDown is a lightweight Python utility from Microsoft that converts PDFs, Office documents, images, audio and other files to… | 193.2k | 4.7M |
| #6 | FirecrawlFirecrawl is an API and open source project to search, scrape, crawl, and interact with web pages, returning LLM-ready markdown or JSON… | 197.4k | 2.9M |
Recent Pinecone SDK releases
Pinecone SDK FAQ
Is Pinecone SDK free and open source?
Yes. Pinecone SDK's source code is on GitHub (pinecone-io/python-sdk) under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can use it for free.
How do I install Pinecone SDK?
Run pip install pinecone. It needs Node.js >=22.0.0. The install section above has the other options from the project's README.
Is Pinecone SDK still maintained?
Yes. The pinecone-io/python-sdk repository was last updated on Oct 20, 2026, and the latest release, v10.1.0 on GitHub, came out on Oct 20, 2026.
How popular is Pinecone SDK?
Pinecone SDK has 456 GitHub stars as of Nov 1, 2026. It gained 2 new stars in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, against a 12-week average of 1 a week. Its main package had about 2.1M downloads that week, +6% against its own 4-week average. That made it #29 among RAG, data and memory tools on the Devtoolwatch Board.
What are the best alternatives to Pinecone SDK?
Other RAG, data and memory tools on the Devtoolwatch Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum: XERJ (#1), Memvid (#2), LEANN (#3), Graphify (#4), MarkItDown (#5). The alternatives table above has their numbers.
What changed in Pinecone SDK version 10?
Pinecone SDK 10.0.0 targets the Pinecone 2026-07 API and moves the schema-based document interface and SchemaBuilder out of pinecone.preview onto the main client. Index creation now uses schema= and deployment= instead of spec= and dimension=. A migration guide covers the full mapping.
Can Pinecone SDK embed text for me?
Yes. Since version 10.1.0, Pinecone SDK lets you mark a string field in a document index with embed=True or sparse_embed=True so Pinecone embeds the text.
Does Pinecone SDK support async code?
Yes. Pinecone SDK includes AsyncPinecone for asyncio. Its index() method is a coroutine, and the returned handle is an async context manager.
How does Pinecone SDK handle rate limiting?
Since version 9.1.0, Pinecone SDK uses decorrelated jitter on every transport. It also shrinks in-flight bulk requests per host during 429 throttling and recovers as pressure eases. A RateLimitError lets you catch throttling separately.
How do I set the API key and other options in Pinecone SDK?
Pinecone SDK takes the key through api_key or the PINECONE_API_KEY environment variable. You can also set a custom control plane host and a request timeout in seconds. Set PINECONE_DEBUG=1 to turn on debug logging.
Sources
Pinecone SDK README badge
Maintainers can show the tool's weekly Board rank in their README:
[](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/pinecone/)How this page is made: Devtoolwatch writes each review from the project's README, releases, package metadata and website, with an AI model, then checks every claim against the source it cites and drops what the sources don't support. The numbers come from Devtoolwatch's daily GitHub snapshots, GitHub's stargazer history, and the npm and PyPI download APIs. Spotted an error? Email [email protected].