TL;DR — Cost Winner by Scale
🏆 Under 5M vectors SUPABASE WINS
Supabase Pro at $25/month includes unlimited queries. Pinecone and Weaviate charge per query on top of storage — Supabase wins at low-to-medium query volume.
⚡ 5M–50M vectors — pay-as-you-go
Pinecone Serverless edges ahead if your query volume is moderate. Qdrant Cloud becomes competitive at higher vector counts due to its straightforward GB pricing.
🚀 50M+ vectors at scale
Self-hosted Qdrant on spot/preemptible VMs dominates — roughly $0.01-0.03/GB versus $0.33+ on managed services. Requires DevOps investment.
2026 Pricing Structure Decoded
Every vector database has a different pricing model, which makes comparison hard. Here's each one decoded to the same units:
Pinecone (Serverless)
- Storage: $0.33 per GB per month
- Reads: $16 per million read units (1 RU ≈ fetching 1 vector with 100 neighbors)
- Writes: $2 per million write units
- Base fee: None (pure pay-as-you-go)
Supabase (pgvector on PostgreSQL)
- Storage: $0.125 per GB per month (database storage)
- Queries: Included in plan — no per-query charge
- Base fee: $25/month (Pro plan — free tier has limits)
Qdrant Cloud
- Storage: ~$9 per GB per month (managed, includes RAM-mapped index)
- Queries: Included
- Base fee: None, but minimum cluster size applies
Weaviate Cloud
- Storage: $0.50 per GB per month
- Queries: $10 per million queries
- Base fee: $25/month (Starter)
Cost at Real Production Scale
All scenarios use 1536-dimension float32 vectors (OpenAI text-embedding-3-small output). Index overhead is ~1.5×.
Scenario 1: 1 Million Vectors, 500K queries/month
| Provider | Storage | Query Cost | Base | Monthly Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SupabaseCHEAPEST | $1.13 | $0 | $25 | $26.13 |
| Pinecone | $2.97 | $8.00 | $0 | $10.97 |
| Qdrant | $82.80 | $0 | $0 | ~$83 |
| Weaviate | $4.50 | $5.00 | $25 | $34.50 |
Winner: Pinecone at low query volume. Supabase wins once queries exceed ~2M/month (where Pinecone's $16/M read unit cost overtakes the $25 base fee advantage).
Scenario 2: 10 Million Vectors, 5M queries/month
| Provider | Storage | Query Cost | Base | Monthly Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SupabaseCHEAPEST | $11.25 | $0 | $25 | $36.25 |
| Pinecone | $29.70 | $80.00 | $0 | $109.70 |
| Qdrant | $828 | $0 | $0 | ~$828 |
| Weaviate | $45.00 | $50.00 | $25 | $120 |
Qdrant Cloud's $9/GB managed price looks expensive but it includes RAM-mapped index for ultra-fast nearest-neighbor search. For high-throughput, latency-critical apps it can justify the cost. Self-hosted Qdrant on a $80/month VM can hold the same 10M vectors.
Scenario 3: 100 Million Vectors, 20M queries/month
| Provider | Est. Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SupabaseCHEAPEST MANAGED | ~$150 | Needs $175+ plan; pgvector perf degrades at this scale |
| Pinecone | ~$900 | Storage + $320 query cost |
| Weaviate | ~$750 | Storage + $200 query cost |
| Self-hosted Qdrant | ~$150-300 | 2–4 nodes on spot VMs; requires ops team |
Supabase pgvector uses IVFFlat or HNSW indexes inside PostgreSQL. At 50M+ vectors, query latency can degrade without careful index tuning, partitioning, and hardware scaling. Beyond 20M vectors, evaluate Pinecone or a self-hosted purpose-built solution.
🧊 Calculate your exact vector DB cost
Enter your vector count, dimensions, and monthly query volume — get a live side-by-side estimate for all 4 providers.
Open Vector DB Calculator →Beyond Cost: Feature Comparison
| Feature | Pinecone | Supabase | Qdrant | Weaviate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed / Serverless | ✅ Fully | ✅ Fully | ✅ Cloud | ✅ Cloud |
| Self-hostable | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ Best-in-class | ✅ |
| Hybrid search (vector + keyword) | ✅ | ✅ via FTS | ✅ | ✅ |
| Metadata filtering | ✅ | ✅ SQL WHERE | ✅ Advanced | ✅ |
| Multi-tenancy | ✅ Namespaces | ✅ RLS | ✅ Collections | ✅ |
| Max vectors (managed) | Unlimited | ~50M practical | ~100M+ | Unlimited |
| Query latency (p99) | <100ms | 10-200ms | <50ms | <100ms |
Which Vector Database Should You Choose?
Choose Supabase pgvector if:
- You already use Supabase for your database (zero extra infra)
- Your vector count is under 5M and queries under 5M/month
- You want SQL-native filtering and joins (no impedance mismatch)
- Budget is tight and predictable costs matter more than raw performance
Choose Pinecone if:
- You need a fully managed, zero-ops vector DB as a service
- Your query volume is moderate (under 2M/month) where costs stay reasonable
- You need strong SLAs and enterprise support
Choose Qdrant if:
- You need maximum query performance (lowest p99 latency)
- You're comfortable self-hosting and have DevOps capacity
- You're at 50M+ vectors where self-hosting becomes dramatically cheaper
- You need advanced payload filtering with complex queries
Choose Weaviate if:
- You need built-in multimodal search (text + image + audio)
- You want GraphQL-native API design
- Your team values module ecosystem (Cohere, OpenAI integrations)
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cheapest vector database in 2026?
For most production workloads under 5M vectors: Supabase pgvector at $25/month (queries included). For serverless at very low query volume: Pinecone can be cheaper. For 50M+ vectors: self-hosted Qdrant on spot VMs at $150-300/month.
How much does Pinecone cost for 1 million vectors?
Approximately $10-30/month depending on query volume. Storage for 1M × 1536-dim vectors is ~$3. At 500K queries/month add ~$8. At 5M queries/month add $80 — making Supabase cheaper.
Is Supabase pgvector good for production?
Yes, for workloads under 20M vectors. Beyond that, HNSW index build time, query latency, and PostgreSQL overhead become limiting factors. Many teams start on Supabase and migrate to Pinecone or Qdrant at scale.
🧊 Run the numbers for your workload
Our vector DB calculator uses the exact pricing model from this article. Plug in your numbers and compare all 4 providers live.
Open Vector DB Calculator →Last updated: June 2, 2026. Pricing data reviewed monthly. Report a discrepancy →