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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
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st)
Pinecone
Ranking in Vector Databases
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 4.5%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pinecone is 7.5%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search4.5%
Pinecone7.5%
Other88.0%
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Chandrakant Bharadwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted search efficiency through real-time querying and seamless indexing for high-volume product data
We are using AWS for our solutions. In AWS, we are heavily using Redshift and Glue. We focus more on vector searches and boosting the keywords, and all those features we are using heavily. In search, the key parameter that we boost up during indexing is essential. We self-implement Elastic Search in our e-commerce application. We are not currently doing a regex setup for RAG Playground, but there is a plan to do that. We are more into vector searches when it comes to how effectively the hybrid search capability meets our needs for combining traditional keyword and vector searches. Regarding the workflow, we are using the API for real-time inference because lots of data is being loaded at real-time on the application, and it is working well for us. I can definitely recommend Elastic Search to be used wherever you have consumer search capabilities needed in a large or scalable manner because it is very effective. I would rate Elastic Search an eight out of ten.
Pcg Guripati - PeerSpot reviewer
Faced challenges with metadata filtering but have achieved reliable long-term memory for chat applications
We were looking at multiple options for a vector database, and we found Pinecone to be the easiest to integrate into our solution. Plus, it has a very generous free tier, which helps us as a startup. The best features Pinecone offers are quick setup and good indexing for us. The retrieval mechanisms are fast, and the integration with Python as with JavaScript and TypeScript libraries that Pinecone provides are very robust. Authentication is also very good. The namespaces feature allows us to break down or store data for each user separately, reducing interference and maintaining privacy as an important feature. Pinecone has positively impacted our organization by enhancing efficiency for the team, and the long-term effect has been that the chats have become much more personalized due to the memory added through a vector database. We are seeing that the trainees getting trained on the platform are more satisfied with the results or messages generated by AI.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All the quality features are there. There are about 60 to 70 reports available."
"I have found the sort capability of Elastic very useful for allowing us to find the information we need very quickly."
"Search is really powerful."
"The initial setup is very easy for small environments."
"Gives us a more user-friendly, centralized solution (for those who just needed a quick glance, without being masters of sed and awk) as well as the ability to implement various mechanisms for machine-learning from our logs, and sending alerts for anomalies."
"It is easy to scale with the cluster node model.​"
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is the Discovery option for the visualization of logs on a GPU instead of on the server."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Enterprise Search is user behavior analysis."
"The most valuable features of the solution are similarity search and maximal marginal relevance search for retrieval purposes."
"Pinecone has positively impacted our organization by enhancing efficiency for the team, and the long-term effect has been that the chats have become much more personalized due to the memory added through a vector database."
"Pinecone has positively impacted our organization by enhancing efficiency for the team, and the long-term effect has been that the chats have become much more personalized due to the memory added through a vector database."
"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 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."
"The semantic search capability is very good."
"We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases."
 

Cons

"They should improve its documentation. Their official documentation is not very informative. They can also improve their technical support. They don't help you much with the customized stuff. They also need to add more visuals. Currently, they have line charts, bar charts, and things like that, and they can add more types of visuals. They should also improve the alerts. They are not very simple to use and are a bit complex. They could add more options to the alerting system."
"Elastic Enterprise Search can improve by adding some kind of search that can be used out of the box without too much struggle with configuration. With every kind of search engine, there is some kind of special function that you need to do. A simple out-of-the-box search would be useful."
"The price could be better. Kibana has some limitations in terms of the tablet to view event logs. I also have a high volume of data. On the initialization part, if you chose Kibana, you'll have some limitations. Kibana was primarily proposed as a log data reviewer to build applications to the viewer log data using Kibana. Then it became a virtualization tool, but it still has limitations from a developer's point of view."
"Elasticsearch should have simpler commands for window filtering."
"There is another solution I'm testing which has a 500 record limit when you do a search on Elastic Enterprise Search. That's the only area in which I'm not sure whether it's a limitation on our end in terms of knowledge or a technical limitation from Elastic Enterprise Search. There is another solution we are looking at that rides on Elastic Enterprise Search. And the limit is for any sort of records that you're doing or data analysis you're trying to do, you can only extract 500 records at a time. I know the open-source nature has a lot of limitations, Otherwise, Elastic Enterprise Search is a fantastic solution and I'd recommend it to anyone."
"Could have more open source tools and testing."
"Elastic Search needs to improve its technical support. It should be customer-friendly and have good support."
"The UI point of view is not very powerful because it is dependent on Kibana."
"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."
"The tool does not confirm whether a file is deleted or not."
"The product fails to offer a serverless type of storage capacity."
"Onboarding could be better and smoother."
"One major issue I have noticed with Pinecone is that it does not allow me to search based on metadata."
"One major issue I have noticed with Pinecone is that it does not allow me to search based on metadata."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use the free version for some logs, but not extensive use."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"The cost varies based on factors like usage volume, network load, data storage size, and service utilization. If your usage isn't too extensive, the cost will be lower."
"The solution is free."
"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."
"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
"The pricing structure depends on the scalability steps."
"The solution is relatively cheaper than other vector DBs in the market."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Elastic Search is overall fairly straightforward.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
We could benefit from refining the machine learning models that we currently use in Elastic Search, along with the possibility to integrate agents, intelligent artificial intelligence, form of agen...
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: September 2025.
872,008 professionals have used our research since 2012.