AITOT

Calculator

Vector DB Cost Estimator

Estimate monthly cost based on vector count, dimension, and queries per day. Index size + query cost broken down.

Pricing data refreshed:

The AITOT Vector DB Cost Estimator compares monthly cost across 9 providers — Pinecone Serverless, Pinecone Pod-based, Qdrant Cloud, Weaviate Cloud, Milvus Cloud, Supabase pgvector, Turso, Chroma Cloud, and self-hosted on a VPS.

Plug in vector count (10k to 100M+), embedding dimension (384 to 3072), and queries per day. The calculator surfaces storage cost, query cost, and index overhead separately so you can identify which line item is driving your bill — and find the cheapest provider at your specific scale.

Toggle binary quantization (supported by Pinecone, Qdrant, and Milvus) to see 32× storage compression at minimal recall loss. For 1536-dim vectors, binary quant cuts storage from 6KB/vector to 192 bytes/vector. Often the difference between a $90/month and $25/month Pinecone bill.

Cheapest

Turbopuffer · Object-store backed

Indexed size: 6.29 GB (Raw size: 5.72 GB)

$4.98

/month

ProviderStorageReadsWritesTotal / mo
TurbopufferObject-store backed

S3-backed; cold reads slower but radically cheaper at scale

$0.25$4.50$0.22$4.98
LanceDB CloudStandard$0.69$6.00$0.30$6.99
Zilliz / MilvusServerless

5M free vectors; pay-as-you-go above

$1.49$10.50$0.53$12.51
Weaviate CloudServerless

Serverless: per-million-vector + per-query

$0.32$7.50$0.38$25.00minimum floor
Supabase pgvectorPro (8GB included)

Bundled with Postgres compute; query cost folded into DB hours

$1.07——$25.00minimum floor
PineconeServerless (s1)

us-east-1; reads billed in Read Units (1 RU ≈ 1 query × 1KB result). Standard plan $50/mo min usage.

$2.64$24.00$0.60$27.24
MongoDB AtlasM10 + Vector Search

Vector search included with Atlas tier

$2.00——$57.00minimum floor
Qdrant CloudHybrid Cloud (1×1GB)

Per-node billing ~$76/node; small nodes hold ~30 GB indexed

$18.60——$76.00minimum floor
PineconePod (p1.x1)

1 pod ≈ 5M 768-dim vectors; scale by adding pods (~$70/pod-mo)

$112.15——$112.15

Index overhead and pricing vary by region. Quantization (int8/binary) trades recall for cost — always benchmark before deploying.

What this calculator does

9 vector DBs compared

Pinecone Serverless + Pod, Qdrant, Weaviate, Milvus, Supabase pgvector, Turso, Chroma, self-hosted.

Binary quantization

Toggle on to see 32× storage compression on Pinecone, Qdrant, and Milvus.

Dimension scaling

See how 1536 vs 3072 dimensions affect storage + query cost at your scale.

Storage + query breakdown

Costs split into index storage, query operations, and metadata storage.

Self-host break-even

Compares managed services to a $80/month VPS running Qdrant or Milvus.

Hybrid + filter pricing

Includes filter operation costs where providers charge separately.

Quick comparison

Monthly cost at 10M × 1536-dim vectors, 100k queries/day

ProviderStorageQueriesTotal / mo
Supabase pgvector (Pro)incl.incl.$25
Qdrant Cloud (basic)$30$10$40
Weaviate Serverless$35$10$45
Milvus Cloud (Starter)$50$15$65
Pinecone Serverless$50$40$90
Chroma Cloud$70$20$90
Pinecone Pod-based (s1)$100$40$140
Self-host on $80 VPS$80incl.$80

Costs drop 60–80% with binary quantization where supported.

How to use this calculator

Compare monthly cost across 9 vector databases for your specific corpus size and query volume.

  1. 1

    Enter vector count

    Multiply documents × chunks per document. Typical: 1 doc = 5–20 chunks at 500 tokens each.

  2. 2

    Pick embedding dimension

    1536 is the default (OpenAI text-embedding-3). 3072 doubles storage cost; 768 halves it.

  3. 3

    Set query volume

    Daily query count for your app. Caching reduces this — most apps cache 30–50% of queries.

  4. 4

    Toggle binary quantization

    On Pinecone, Qdrant, or Milvus, binary quant cuts storage 32× — huge bill reduction.

Why use this calculator

  • ✓9 providers tracked monthly
  • ✓Binary quantization modeling
  • ✓Self-host comparisons included
  • ✓Dimension + filter costs separated
  • ✓Free tier limits surfaced
  • ✓No login required

Frequently Asked Questions

Which vector database is cheapest at 10M vectors in 2026?+
For 10M × 1536-dim vectors at moderate query volume: pgvector on a $25/month Supabase Pro instance is cheapest. Qdrant Cloud at $40/month and Weaviate Serverless at $45/month follow. Pinecone Serverless at $90/month and Pinecone Pod-based at $140/month are premium-priced.
How is Pinecone Serverless priced vs Pod-based?+
Serverless: $0.40/M writes + $4 per million reads + $0.33/GB-month storage. Pod-based: $0.096/hour for s1 starter pod (~$70/month base). Serverless wins at low query volume and bursty traffic. Pod-based wins at >500 reads/second steady-state.
Does vector dimension affect cost a lot?+
Yes. Going from 1536 (OpenAI text-embedding-3-large) to 3072 (Cohere Embed v4) doubles storage cost on most providers. With binary quantization (Pinecone, Qdrant), 1536-dim vectors compress to 192 bytes — 32× smaller. Check the "use binary quantization" toggle.
Pinecone vs Weaviate vs Qdrant — which to pick in 2026?+
Pinecone: easiest ops, premium price. Weaviate: best for hybrid search + graph. Qdrant: cheapest at scale, best filtering performance. Supabase pgvector: best if you already have Postgres. The calculator shows side-by-side cost at your specific scale.
How do I cut my vector DB bill in half?+
Three biggest levers: (1) reduce embedding dimension via OpenAI Matryoshka — store at 512 instead of 1536 with minimal recall loss, (2) enable binary quantization where supported, (3) move from Pinecone Pod-based to Qdrant Cloud or self-hosted on a $80/month VPS for 80% savings.
Is self-hosted Qdrant or Milvus actually cheaper?+
At 10M+ vectors, yes — a $80/month VPS runs Qdrant fine for 50M vectors. Below 5M vectors, managed providers (Pinecone Free, Qdrant Cloud free tier) often win on total cost when you account for ops time. Calculator includes a self-hosted estimate.