# Create a backup of an index

```bash curl theme={null}
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
INDEX_NAME="docs-example"

curl "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/$INDEX_NAME/backups" \
    -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
    -H 'accept: application/json' \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-04" \
    -d '{
      "name": "example-backup", 
      "description": "Monthly backup of production index"
      }'
```

```json curl theme={null}
{
  "backup_id":"8c85e612-ed1c-4f97-9f8c-8194e07bcf71",
  "source_index_id":"f73b36c9-faf5-4a2c-b1d6-4013d8b1cc74",
  "source_index_name":"docs-example",
  "tags":{},
  "name":"example-backup",
  "description":"Monthly backup of production index",
  "status":"Ready",
  "cloud":"aws",
  "region":"us-east-1",
  "dimension":1024,
  "record_count":96,
  "namespace_count":3,
  "size_bytes":1069169,
  "created_at":"2025-05-14T16:37:25.625540Z"
  }
```

`POST /indexes/{index_name}/backups`

:::code-group
```bash title="cURL"
curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/{index_name}/backups \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "name": "<string>",
  "description": "<string>"
}'
```

```json title="201"
{
  "backup_id": "670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440001",
  "source_index_name": "my-index",
  "source_index_id": "670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  "source_index_deleted_at": "2024-03-05T12:00:00.000Z",
  "name": "backup-2025-02-04",
  "description": "Backup before bulk update.",
  "status": "Ready",
  "cloud": "aws",
  "region": "us-east-1",
  "dimension": 1536,
  "metric": "<string>",
  "schema": {
    "fields": {
      "description": {
        "filterable": true
      },
      "genre": {
        "filterable": true
      },
      "year": {
        "filterable": true
      }
    }
  },
  "record_count": 120000,
  "namespace_count": 3,
  "size_bytes": 10000000,
  "tags": {
    "tag0": "val0",
    "tag1": "val1"
  },
  "created_at": "<string>"
}
```
:::

## Authorizations

- `Authorization` (header, string, required) — Bearer authentication header of the form `Bearer <token>`.

## Path Parameters

- `index_name` (path, string, required) — Name of the index to backup

## Headers

- `X-Pinecone-Api-Version` (header, string, required) — Required date-based version header

## Body

- `name` (body, string) — The name of the backup.
- `description` (body, string) — A description of the backup.

## Response

- `201` — The backup has been successfully created.
- `400` — Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters.
- `401` — Unauthorized. Possible causes: Invalid API key.
- `402` — Payment required. Organization is on a paid plan and is delinquent on payment.
- `403` — You've exceed your backup quota.
- `422` — Unprocessable entity. The request body could not be deserialized.
- `500` — Internal server error.

## Related pages

- [Create a backup of an index](./database-2026-07-control-plane-create-backup.md)
- [List backups for all indexes in a project](./database-2026-07-control-plane-list-project-backups.md)
- [List backups for an index](./database-2026-07-control-plane-list-index-backups.md)
- [Describe a backup](./database-2026-07-control-plane-describe-backup.md)
- [Delete a backup](./database-2026-07-control-plane-delete-backup.md)
- [Create an index from a backup](./database-2026-07-control-plane-create-index-from-backup.md)
- [List restore jobs](./database-2026-07-control-plane-list-restore-jobs.md)
- [Describe a restore job](./database-2026-07-control-plane-describe-restore-job.md)
- [List collections](./database-2026-07-control-plane-list-collections.md)
- [Create a collection](./database-2026-07-control-plane-create-collection.md)

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