Hard facts side by side: free tiers, prices, limits, SDKs and privacy. Every value links to the official page it came from and is re-checked every week.
| For search |  Perplexity API |  ChromaBuilding block |  PineconeBuilding block |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Not listed | Not listed | Yes Starter plan: up to 2 GB storage, 2M write units and 1M read units per month, 5 indexes. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
| Starting price |
Pay as you go, no subscription. Model tokens extra, e.g. openai/gpt-6-luna $0.10 in, $0.50 out per 1M.
Source, Nov 15, 2026| Not listed |
| $20/month Builder plan, flat monthly price. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
| Rate limit | 1 request/s at Tier 0 Agent API, shared across keys. Tier 1 ($50+ credits bought) gets 3 QPS; higher tiers get more. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | Not listed | 100 queries/sec per namespace Starter plan; upserts also 100 requests/sec per namespace. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| Size limit | Not listed | Not listed | top_k max 10,000 Dense vectors up to 20,000 dimensions; 40 KB filterable metadata per record. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
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| Storage | Not listed | Not listed | 2 GB free Starter plan storage cap. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| Official SDKs | PythonJavaScript / TypeScript Official SDKs for Python 3.10+ and Node.js 20+ (TypeScript). Source, Nov 15, 2026 | PythonJavaScript / TypeScript | PythonJavaScript / TypeScript |
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| Open source | Not listed | Yes Apache 2.0. Run it locally or self-host; Chroma Cloud winds down and stops serving reads on Dec 22, 2026. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | Not listed |
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| Trains on your data | No API Terms say Customer Content is not used to train models; zero data retention is not the default. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | Not listed | No Security page says customer data is only used for servicing API calls. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
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| EU hosting | No Trust Center lists all 23 subprocessors, incl. AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, in the US; no EU region offered. Source, Nov 13, 2026 | Not listed | Yes Ireland (eu-west-1), Frankfurt (eu-central-1) and Netherlands (europe-west4) on Builder plan and above. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| Compliance | SOC 2 SOC 2 Type II report; a 2025 HIPAA gap assessment is listed but is not a certification. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | Not listed | SOC 2ISO 27001GDPRHIPAA Trust Center lists SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
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Getting started page gives install commands for Python (pip), TypeScript (npm) and Rust (cargo).
Wirestack