Every category where a model named Pinecone for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Vector databases	Data platform	14%	3 of 24	28%	58	criticized challenger
NoSQL databases	Data platform	0%	51 of 72	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by MongoDB at 59%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Pinecone yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Pinecone across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	2	0	1	1	4
GPT-5.4 mini	0	3	1	1	5
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	5	0	1	6
Perplexity Sonar	0	2	1	2	5
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	2	1	2	6
Mistral Small	1	1	2	0	4
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	2	2	5
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	2	3
Qwen 3.7 Flash	2	1	0	2	5
Kimi K2	4	0	0	1	5
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	2	1	2	6
MiniMax M2.5	0	4	0	1	5

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct35 labels12

Paraphrase33 labels17

Comparative36 labels16not counted in share

Budget-constrained29 labels2

Scale-constrained23 labels8

Negative34 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative190 labels in all, every segment counted; 39 of the 56 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“I'd recommend starting with pgvector if you're already on PostgreSQL, or Pinecone if you want fully managed with minimal ops overhead” Kimi K2 · Vector databases · direct prompt · first choice

“Pinecone | Managed SaaS (serverless pods) | Zero-ops, low-latency RAG/enterprise AI | Billions | Usage-based; $$ but predictable” Grok 4.1 Fast · Vector databases · scale prompt · first choice

“Start with Pinecone if speed to market and operational simplicity are paramount, or Qdrant if you prefer open-source” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Vector databases · direct prompt · first choice

“Choose Pinecone if: You want the fastest path to production, have budget, and don't want to manage infrastructure.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Vector databases · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Specific Targets to Watch Out For: Pinecone (purely managed serverless)... you cannot take your data elsewhere without significant re-architecture.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Vector databases · negative prompt · hard negative

“Be most cautious about: 1. Pinecone if you value control, portability, or cost predictability.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Vector databases · negative prompt · hard negative

“Avoid Initially: Pinecone/Weaviate Cloud ... not "limited budget"” Grok 4.1 Fast · Vector databases · budget prompt · hard negative

“Avoid Pinecone unless you value zero-ops simplicity above all” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Vector databases · direct prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Pinecone, over the 189 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Pinecone was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Weaviate174 of 1893Not in the top three

Qdrant167 of 18938Compare →

pgvector152 of 18960Compare →

Milvus110 of 1891Not in the top three

Chroma74 of 1896Not in the top three

Milvus / Zilliz Cloud30 of 1891Not in the top three

Zilliz Cloud28 of 1891Not in the top three

LanceDB23 of 1890Not in the top three

Redis23 of 1890Not in the top three

Elasticsearch22 of 1890Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Pinecone. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 162 of the 189 answers that named Pinecone and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

firecrawl.dev102

encore.dev94

dev.to62

iternal.ai50

medium.com46

g2.com45

atlan.com41

marktechpost.com39

pinecone.io31

actian.com30

540 of the 540 domain citations in answers naming Pinecone came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

firecrawl.dev/blog/best-vector-databases102

encore.dev/articles/best-vector-databases94

iternal.ai/insights/best-vector-databases-202650

g2.com/articles/best-vector-databases45

atlan.com/know/top-vector-databases-enterprise-ai40

marktechpost.com/2026/05/10/best-vector-databases-in-2026-pricing-scale-limits-and-archite34

dev.to/michaelaiglobal/beyond-pinecone-a-developers-deep-dive-into-the-top-10-vector-datab31

zenml.io/blog/vector-databases-for-rag30

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Pinecone

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Pinecone; a claim can dispute any of them.

Pinecone Serverless 3Pinecone (Serverless) 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Pinecone's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Pinecone, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at pinecone.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.