Updates configuration on an existing index. You can update `deletion_protection`, `tags`, and `read_capacity` (for example, converting from `OnDemand` to `Dedicated`). The schema itself is immutable — to change field types or add new indexed fields, create a new index and re-upsert.

This is a partial update: only the fields you include in the request body are modified. Unspecified fields are left unchanged. To clear `tags`, send `"tags": {}`.

:::code-group
```python Python
# pip install --upgrade pinecone
import os
from pinecone import Pinecone

pc = Pinecone(api_key=os.environ["PINECONE_API_KEY"])

# Enable deletion protection
pc.indexes.configure(
    name="articles",
    deletion_protection="enabled",
)

# Convert read capacity from OnDemand to Dedicated
pc.indexes.configure(
    name="articles",
    read_capacity={
        "mode": "Dedicated",
        "dedicated": {
            "node_type": "b1",
            "scaling": "Manual",
            "manual": {"shards": 1, "replicas": 1},
        },
    },
)
```

```shell curl
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"

# Enable deletion protection
curl -X PATCH "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/articles" \
  -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07" \
  -d '{ "deletion_protection": "enabled" }'

# Convert read capacity from OnDemand to Dedicated
curl -X PATCH "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/articles" \
  -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07" \
  -d '{
    "read_capacity": {
      "mode": "Dedicated",
      "dedicated": {
        "node_type": "b1",
        "scaling": "Manual",
        "manual": { "shards": 1, "replicas": 1 }
      }
    }
  }'
```
:::

`PATCH /indexes/{index_name}`

:::code-group
```json title="200"
{
  "deletion_protection": "disabled",
  "deployment": {
    "cloud": "aws",
    "deployment_type": "managed",
    "region": "us-east-1"
  },
  "host": "my-index-abc123.svc.pinecone.io",
  "name": "my-index",
  "read_capacity": {
    "mode": "OnDemand",
    "status": {
      "state": "Ready"
    }
  },
  "schema": {
    "fields": {
      "embedding": {
        "dimension": 1536,
        "metric": "cosine",
        "type": "dense_vector"
      },
      "title": {
        "full_text_search": {
          "language": "en",
          "stemming": false,
          "stop_words": false
        },
        "type": "string"
      }
    }
  },
  "status": {
    "ready": true,
    "state": "Ready"
  }
}
```

```json title="400"
{
  "error": {
    "code": "INVALID_ARGUMENT",
    "message": "Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters."
  },
  "status": 400
}
```

```json title="403"
{
  "error": {
    "code": "FORBIDDEN",
    "message": "Increase your quota or upgrade to create more indexes."
  },
  "status": 403
}
```

```json title="404"
{
  "error": {
    "code": "NOT_FOUND",
    "message": "Index example-index not found."
  },
  "status": 404
}
```

```json title="422"
{
  "error": {
    "code": "UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY",
    "message": "Failed to deserialize the JSON body into the target type: missing field `metric` at line 1 column 16"
  },
  "status": 422
}
```

```json title="500"
{
  "error": {
    "code": "UNKNOWN",
    "message": "Internal server error"
  },
  "status": 500
}
```
:::

#### Authorizations

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `Api-Key` | `string` | - |  |

An API Key is required to call Pinecone APIs. Get yours from the [console](https://app.pinecone.io/).

#### Headers

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `X-Pinecone-Api-Version` | `string` | `2026-07` | Required date-based version header |

#### Path Parameters

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `index_name` | `string` | - | The name of the index to configure. |

#### Body

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `deployment?` | `object` | - | Deployment update parameters for pod-based indexes. Specify replicas, pod_type, or both. Deployment type, cloud/region, and environment cannot be changed after creation. Do not include a deployment_type field; it is not accepted. |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `replicas?` | `integer` | `1` | The number of replicas. Replicas duplicate your index. They provide higher availability and throughput. Replicas can be scaled up or down as your needs change. Required range: 1 <= x |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `pod_type?` | `string` | `p1.x1` | The type of pod to use. One of s1, p1, or p2 appended with . and one of x1, x2, x4, or x8. |
:::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `schema?` | `object` | - | Schema updates to apply to an existing index. Only semantic_text field parameters can be updated after index creation. The model itself cannot be changed once set; only write_parameters and read_parameters may be updated if the model stays the same. |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `fields` | `object` | - | A map of semantic text field names to their updated parameters. Only fields of type semantic_text may be specified, and only one field per request. |
:::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `read_capacity?` | `object` | - |  |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `mode` | `string` | - | The mode of the index. Possible values: OnDemand or Dedicated. Defaults to OnDemand. If set to Dedicated, dedicated.node_type, and dedicated.scaling must be specified. |
:::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `tags?` | `object \| null` | - | Custom user tags added to an index, at most 20 per index. Keys must be 80 characters or less and alphanumeric, '', or '-'. Values must be 120 characters or less and consist of printable ASCII characters or spaces. To unset a key, set the value to be an empty string. null in responses when the index has no tags. |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `deletion_protection?` | `string` | `disabled` |  |

Whether [deletion protection](/guides/manage-data-manage-indexes#configure-deletion-protection) is enabled/disabled for the index. Possible values: `disabled` or `enabled`.

#### Response

`200` — The configuration change was recorded and the updated index is returned. Changes that resize the index (replicas, shards, read capacity) are applied asynchronously; poll the index `status` to see when they take effect.

The IndexModel describes the configuration and status of a Pinecone index.

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `name` | `string` | - | The name of the index. Resource name must be 1-45 characters long, start and end with an alphanumeric character, and consist only of lower case alphanumeric characters or '-'. Required string length: 1 - 45. Example: example-index |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `host` | `string` | - | The URL address where the index is hosted. Example: semantic-search-c01b5b5.svc.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `private_host?` | `string` | - | The private endpoint URL of an index. Example: semantic-search-c01b5b5.svc.private.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `status` | `object` | - | The current status of the index. |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `ready` | `boolean` | - | Whether the index is ready for use. |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `state` | `string` | - | The current state of the index. Possible values: Initializing, InitializationFailed, Failed, ScalingUp, ScalingDown, ScalingUpPodSize, Terminating, Ready, or Disabled. |
:::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `deployment` | `object` | - | Deployment configuration for a pod-based index. |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `deployment_type` | `enum<string>` | - | Identifies this as a pod-based deployment. Must be pod. Available options: pod |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `environment` | `string` | - | The environment where the index is hosted. Example: us-east1-gcp |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `replicas?` | `integer` | `1` | The number of replicas. Replicas duplicate your index. They provide higher availability and throughput. Replicas can be scaled up or down as your needs change. Required range: 1 <= x |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `shards?` | `integer` | `1` | The number of shards. Shards split your data across multiple pods so you can fit more data into an index. Required range: 1 <= x |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `pod_type` | `string` | `p1.x1` | The type of pod to use. One of s1, p1, or p2 appended with . and one of x1, x2, x4, or x8. |
:::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `read_capacity?` | `object` | - |  |

::::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `mode` | `string` | - | The mode of the index. Possible values: OnDemand or Dedicated. Defaults to OnDemand. If set to Dedicated, dedicated.node_type, and dedicated.scaling must be specified. |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `status` | `object` | - | The current status of factors affecting the read capacity of a serverless index |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `state` | `string` | - |  |

The `state` describes the overall status of factors relating to the read capacity of an index. Available values: - `Ready` is the state most of the time - `Scaling` if the number of replicas or shards has been recently updated by calling the [configure index endpoint](/guides/database-control-plane-configure-index) - `Migrating` if the index is being migrated to a new `node_type` - `Error` if there is an error with the read capacity configuration. In that case, see `error_message` for more details.

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `current_replicas?` | `integer \| null` | - | The number of replicas. Each replica has dedicated compute resources and data storage. Increasing this number will increase the total throughput of the index. null for OnDemand indexes and for a Dedicated index that has not finished provisioning. |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `current_shards?` | `integer \| null` | - | The number of shards. Each shard has dedicated storage. Increasing shards alleviates index fullness. null for OnDemand indexes and for a Dedicated index that has not finished provisioning. |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `error_message?` | `string` | - | An optional error message indicating any issues with your read capacity configuration |
:::
::::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `source_collection?` | `string` | - | The name of the collection this index was created from, if any. Example: movie-embeddings |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `source_backup_id?` | `string` | - | The ID of the backup this index was restored from, if any. Example: 670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000 |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `cmek_id?` | `string` | - | The ID of the customer-managed encryption key (CMEK) used to encrypt this index, if any. Example: arn:aws:kms:us-east-1:123456789012:key/mrk-abc123 |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `schema` | `object` | - | The schema of a Pinecone index. The schema defines the typed fields that documents in the index can contain, including vector fields, semantic text fields, and metadata fields. |

:::accordion{title="Show child attributes"}
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `fields` | `object` | - | A map of field names to their configurations. Indexes that are served by the vectors API — created with the reserved _values / _sparse_values schema, or created by an earlier API version from dimension, metric, and vector_type — report their vector fields under the reserved names _values (dense) and _sparse_values (sparse), and any metadata fields configured for filtering as legacy fields carrying only filterable. Dense vectors-API indexes always report both _values and _sparse_values, regardless of how they were created. |
:::

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `tags?` | `object \| null` | - | Custom user tags added to an index, at most 20 per index. Keys must be 80 characters or less and alphanumeric, '', or '-'. Values must be 120 characters or less and consist of printable ASCII characters or spaces. To unset a key, set the value to be an empty string. null in responses when the index has no tags. |

| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `deletion_protection` | `string` | `disabled` |  |

Whether [deletion protection](/guides/manage-data-manage-indexes#configure-deletion-protection) is enabled/disabled for the index. Possible values: `disabled` or `enabled`.

## Related pages

- [List indexes](./database-control-plane-list-indexes.md)
- [Create an index](./database-control-plane-create-index.md)
- [Create an index with integrated embedding](./database-control-plane-create-for-model.md)
- [Describe an index](./database-control-plane-describe-index.md)
- [Delete an index](./database-control-plane-delete-index.md)
- [Get index stats](./database-data-plane-describeindexstats.md)

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