Create an index in BYOC

Create an index in your Pinecone BYOC environment using the standard Pinecone API.

Once your BYOC environment is deployed, you can create indexes and read/write data using the standard Pinecone API.

Control plane operations like creating, listing, and deleting indexes work via the standard Pinecone API regardless of your network access mode.

BYOC supports both on-demand and dedicated read nodes (DRN) indexes.

• On-demand indexes and their namespaces share one pool of nodes in your BYOC environment.
• DRN indexes each get their own nodes, which you size with shards and replicas when you create the index.

Both index types support vector search and full-text search.

To create an index in your BYOC environment, set these fields in the create request:

• deployment.deployment_type: byoc
• deployment.environment: The environment name from the deployment output
• read_capacity.mode: OnDemand for an on-demand index, or Dedicated for a DRN index

The following examples use the API and SDKs.

You can also create either index type in the Pinecone console: select the BYOC tab under Capacity mode, set Read capacity to On-demand or Dedicated read nodes, and enter your Environment ID.

Create a DRN index

A DRN index runs on its own set of nodes. Set the node type, shards, and replicas in read_capacity.

curl

PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"

curl -X POST "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes" \
     -H "Accept: application/json" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
     -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07" \
     -d '{
           "name": "example-byoc-index",
           "deployment": {
             "deployment_type": "byoc",
             "environment": "aws-us-east-1-26bf.byoc"
           },
           "schema": {
             "fields": {
               "title": { "type": "string", "full_text_search": {} },
               "body": { "type": "string", "full_text_search": {} },
               "embedding": { "type": "dense_vector", "dimension": 1536, "metric": "cosine" }
             }
           },
           "read_capacity": {
             "mode": "Dedicated",
             "dedicated": {
               "node_type": "b1",
               "scaling": "Manual",
               "manual": {
                 "shards": 1,
                 "replicas": 1
               }
             }
           },
           "deletion_protection": "disabled"
         }'

Create an on-demand index

An on-demand index sets no shards or replicas, because it runs on the shared on-demand pool.

curl

PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"

curl -X POST "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes" \
     -H "Accept: application/json" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
     -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07" \
     -d '{
           "name": "example-byoc-on-demand-index",
           "deployment": {
             "deployment_type": "byoc",
             "environment": "aws-us-east-1-26bf.byoc"
           },
           "schema": {
             "fields": {
               "title": { "type": "string", "full_text_search": {} },
               "body": { "type": "string", "full_text_search": {} },
               "embedding": { "type": "dense_vector", "dimension": 1536, "metric": "cosine" }
             }
           },
           "read_capacity": {
             "mode": "OnDemand"
           },
           "deletion_protection": "disabled"
         }'

Next steps

• Connect to and manage your BYOC indexes