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Elastic Search vs Pinecone comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Search
Ranking in Vector Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st)
Pinecone
Ranking in Vector Databases
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 4.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pinecone is 7.4%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors
Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.
Neeraj Maurya - PeerSpot reviewer
It is very flexible, allowing us to input any kind of data dimensions into the platform
As per my advice, assess your data requirements. If you're working with PDF files and do not have much data, you could use other databases because they are similar to Pinecone. However, if you have a huge amount of data, I would suggest using Pinecone as it handles large datasets more efficiently. Pinecone offers a rich UI and managed services, making it easy to use and visualize data, which is a big advantage. However, if the client has a limited budget, I would recommend open-source models and databases instead. I would rate Pinecone an eight out of ten because of its functionality and ease of use despite the cost.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We had many reasons to implement Elasticsearch for search term solutions. Elasticsearch products provide enterprise landscape support for different areas of the company."
"The stability of Elasticsearch was very high, and I would rate it a ten."
"The full text search capabilities in Elastic Search have proven to be extremely valuable for our operations."
"The most valuable features are the data store and the X-pack extension."
"It helps us to analyse the logs based on the location, user, and other log parameters."
"It is highly valuable because of its simplicity in maintenance, where most tasks are handled for you, and it offers a plethora of built-in features."
"The initial installation and setup were straightforward."
"We can easily collect all the data and view historical trends using the product. We can view the applications and identify the issues effectively."
"The most valuable features of the solution are similarity search and maximal marginal relevance search for retrieval purposes."
"The most valuable feature of Pinecone is its managed service aspect. There are many vector databases available, but Pinecone stands out in the market. It is very flexible, allowing us to input any kind of data dimensions into the platform. This makes it easy to use for both technical and non-technical users."
"We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases."
"The best thing about Pinecone is its private local host feature. It displays all the maintenance parameters and lets us view the data sent to the database. We can also see the status of the CD and which application it corresponds to."
"The product's setup phase was easy."
"The semantic search capability is very good."
 

Cons

"Elastic Search needs to improve its technical support. It should be customer-friendly and have good support."
"It should be easier to use. It has been getting better because many functions are pre-defined, but it still needs improvement."
"I would like to be able to do correlations between multiple indexes."
"The pricing of this product needs to be more clear because I cannot understand it when I review the website."
"Both the graph feature and the reporting feature are a little bit lacking. The alerting also needs to be improved."
"Machine learning on search needs improvement."
"Kibana should be more friendly, especially when building dashboards."
"There should be more stability."
"The product fails to offer a serverless type of storage capacity."
"I want to suggest that Pinecone requires a login and API key, but I would prefer not to have a login system and to use the environment directly."
"The tool does not confirm whether a file is deleted or not."
"Onboarding could be better and smoother."
"For testing purposes, the product should offer support locally as it is one area where the tool has shortcomings."
"Pinecone can be made more budget-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
"We are paying $1,500 a month to use the solution. If you want to have endpoint protection you need to pay more."
"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"We are using the open-sourced version."
"The price of Elasticsearch is fair. It is a more expensive solution, like QRadar. The price for Elasticsearch is not much more than other solutions we have."
"The price could be better."
"Pinecone is not cheap; it's actually quite expensive. We find that using Pinecone can raise our budget significantly. On the other hand, using open-source options is more budget-friendly."
"I think Pinecone is cheaper to use than other options I've explored. However, I also remember that they offer a paid version."
"I have experience with the tool's free version."
"The solution is relatively cheaper than other vector DBs in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
It would be useful if a feature for renaming indices could be added without affecting the performance of other features. However, overall, the consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are already...
What do you like most about Pinecone?
We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases.
What needs improvement with Pinecone?
I want to suggest that Pinecone requires a login and API key, but I would prefer not to have a login system and to use the environment directly.
What is your primary use case for Pinecone?
I've used Pinecone to streamline token generation for my chatbot's functionality. Specifically, I used it for the OpenNeeam Building.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
1. Airbnb 2. DoorDash 3. Instacart 4. Lyft 5. Pinterest 6. Reddit 7. Slack 8. Snapchat 9. Spotify 10. TikTok 11. Twitter 12. Uber 13. Zoom 14. Adobe 15. Amazon 16. Apple 17. Facebook 18. Google 19. IBM 20. Microsoft 21. Netflix 22. Salesforce 23. Shopify 24. Square 25. Tesla 26. TikTok 27. Twitch 28. Uber Eats 29. WhatsApp 30. Yelp 31. Zillow 32. Zynga
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Search vs. Pinecone and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.