Pinecone Local reached end of life on October 7, 2026: test in a separate Pinecone project instead

What you get

Pinecone's release notes for October 7, 2026 carry an entry titled "End of life: Pinecone Local". Pinecone Local was the in-memory Docker emulator for local development and testing. The entry says it has reached end of life and is no longer available. Its documentation has been removed.

Pinecone's stated replacement is to use a separate project in your Pinecone account to develop and test your applications.

Prerequisites

This affects you if you test against the local Pinecone Docker emulator, on your own machine or in automated tests.
A Pinecone account.
A Pinecone API key for your test project in PINECONE_API_KEY. Pinecone's docs say each project has one or more API keys, and you need a valid key for the project you call.

Steps

Find every place that starts or points to Pinecone Local, such as Docker files, test setup scripts and local host addresses.
Create a separate project in your Pinecone account for development and testing.
Create an API key in that project and put it in PINECONE_API_KEY for your test environment. Keep it apart from your production key.
Remove the emulator from your setup and point your tests at the test project.

The release note has no code sample, so none is shown here.

Test it

Run your tests with the test project's key. They should create and query indexes in the test project, and nothing should try to reach the local emulator.

Not confirmed

The release note does not say whether existing Pinecone Local Docker images still run.
It does not state any cost for a test project, or a limit on the number of projects.
It does not give a reason for the retirement or a migration guide.
There is no code sample because the announcement has none.

What you'll need

What you get

Prerequisites

Steps

Test it

Not confirmed