Category: AI
3 European alternatives to Pinecone — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted.
Vector database for AI applications
Facts
- Headquarters
- US (US)
- Category
- AI
- Type
- Product
- GDPR-compliant
- No
- Open-source
- No
- Data hosting
- US
Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Pinecone
- Meilisearch↗
Open-core search engine: the Community Edition is MIT-licensed and free to use, but the Enterprise Edition (sharding, advanced observability, analytics) has been under BUSL 1.1 since v1.19 (August 2025), requiring a commercial agreement for production use.
FR · commercial
Frequently asked questions
What is the best European alternative to Pinecone?
It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Pinecone include Meilisearch, Qdrant and Weaviate. On this page you can compare 3 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.
Are there open-source alternatives to Pinecone?
Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Pinecone include Qdrant and Weaviate. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.
Is Pinecone GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?
Pinecone is headquartered in US and hosts data in US. Its GDPR compliance is limited or unclear. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.