Vector Database Cost Calculator

About This Tool

The Vector Database Cost Calculator gives you back-of-envelope monthly cost across Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, and self-hosted options. Plug in record count, embedding dimensions, and query volume — the tool does the storage math (records × dims × 4 bytes for float32) and applies each provider's pricing model.

How vector storage scales

Each float32 dimension is 4 bytes. A 1536-dim vector consumes 6KB; a 3072-dim vector takes 12KB. Multiply by record count to get raw storage. Real indexes carry overhead — HNSW graphs add 30-50%, payload metadata varies — but the float storage is the dominant term.

Pricing models compared

Pinecone Serverless prices storage at $0.33/GB-month and queries via “read units” (~50 vectors per RU at default top-K). Predictable for read-heavy small-to-mid workloads. Weaviate Cloud prices by million vectors stored and million queries — simpler math but pricier at scale. Qdrant Cloud uses pod-hour pricing that translates to roughly $68/GB-month for managed clusters; queries are included. Self-hosted Qdrant or pgvector on your own infra has near-zero marginal cost but adds DevOps overhead.

When to switch from managed to self-hosted

The break-even sits around $500-$1000/month. Below that, the time saved on infra outweighs the rental premium. Above it, you're paying a 5-10x markup for managed convenience — at which point a single $200/month VM running Qdrant often handles 100M vectors with sub-100ms p99 latency. Plan a 4-6 week migration window when you cross the threshold.

Hidden costs

Watch for: bandwidth charges (egress can dominate at high QPS), filter index overhead (metadata-filtered queries consume more compute), reranker API calls (often added downstream of vector retrieval), and re-embedding when you upgrade models. Budget 20-30% above raw vector DB pricing for total stack cost.

Combine with the embeddings cost calculator for full RAG indexing budget. Compare RAG vs fine-tuning at RAG vs fine-tune. For overall AI spend planning, see AI monthly budget calculator. Estimate query cost downstream with LLM cost comparison.