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Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you create, update, and version infrastructure by defining resources in configuration files. This allows for a repeated workflow for provisioning and managing your infrastructure. This page describes how to use the Terraform Provider for Pinecone to manage Pinecone indexes, collections, API keys, and projects.

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Requirements

Ensure you have the following:

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Install the provider

  1. Configuring the Pinecone provider in your Terraform configuration file: 
    terraform { 
  required_providers { 
    pinecone = { 
      source = "pinecone-io/pinecone" 
      version = "~> 2.0.0"
    } 
  } 
}
  2. Run terraform init to install the provider from the Terraform registry. Alternatively, you can download the latest binary for your target platfrom the GitHub repository.

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Authenticate

For managing indexes and collections, you authenticate with a Pinecone API key. For managing API keys and projects, you authenticate with Pinecone service account credentials (client ID and client secret).
  1. Set environment variables for authentication: 
    # For indexes and collections  
export PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"

# For API keys and projects
export PINECONE_CLIENT_ID="YOUR_CLIENT_ID"
export PINECONE_CLIENT_SECRET="YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET"
  2. Append the following to your Terraform configuration file: 
    provider "pinecone" {}
You can also set the API key and/or service account credential as input variables.

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Manage resources

The Terraform Provider for Pinecone allows Terraform to manage indexes, collections, API keys, and projects.

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Indexes

The pinecone_index resource lets you create, update, and delete indexes.
You can update only the index deletion protection, tags, and integrated inference embedding settings of an index.
# Dense index
resource "pinecone_index" "example-index" {
  name = "example-index"
  dimension = 1536
  metric = "cosine"
  vector_type = "dense"
  spec = {
    serverless = {
      cloud = "aws"
      region = "us-west-2"
    }
  }
  deletion_protection = "disabled"
  tags = {
    environment = "development"
  }
}

# Dense index with integrated embedding
resource "pinecone_index" "example-index-integrated" {
  name = "example-index-integrated"
  spec = {
    serverless = {
      cloud = "aws"
      region = "us-west-2"
    }
  }
  embed = {
    model = "llama-text-embed-v2"
    field_map = {
      text = "chunk_text"
    }
  }
}

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Collections

The pinecone_collection resource lets you create and delete collections for pod-based indexes. 
resource "pinecone_index" "example-index" {
  name = "example-index"
  dimension = 10
  spec = {
    pod = {
      environment = "us-west4-gcp"
      pod_type = "s1.x1"
    }
  }
}

resource "pinecone_collection" "example-collection" {
  name = "example-collection"
  source = pinecone_index.example-index.name

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API keys

The pinecone_api_key resource lets you create, update, and delete API keys.
You can update only the name and roles of an API key.
# API key with default roles (ProjectEditor)
resource "pinecone_api_key" "example-key" {
  name = "example-key"
  project_id = "YOUR_PROJECT_ID"
}

# API key with custom roles
resource "pinecone_api_key" "example-key-custom_roles" {
  name = "example-key-custom-roles"
  project_id = "YOUR_PROJECT_ID"
  roles = ["ProjectViewer", "DataPlaneViewer"]
}

output "api_key_roles" {
  description = "The roles assigned to the API key"
  value       = pinecone_api_key.example.roles
}

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Projects

The pinecone_project resource lets you create, update, and delete projects.
Customers who signed up for a Standard or Enterprise plan on or after August 18, 2025 cannot create pod-based indexes and cannot set the max pods for a project.
# Basic project
resource "pinecone_project" "example-project" {
  name = "example-project"
}

# Project with CMEK encryption enabled
resource "pinecone_project" "example-project-encrypted" {
  name = "example-project-encrypted"
  force_encryption_with_cmek = true
}

# Project with custom max pods
resource "pinecone_project" "example-project-custom-pods" {
  name = "example-project-custom-pods"
  max_pods = 10
}

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Limitations

The Terraform Provider for Pinecone does not support the following resources:

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See also

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