To restore from a backup, set `spec.serverless.source_backup_id` and specify the target `cloud` and `region`. Same-cloud cross-region restore is supported when available for the backup's source region. Cross-cloud restore is not supported.
For guidance and examples, see [Create an index](/guides/index-data-create-an-index).

## Cloud regions

For serverless indexes, the `cloud` and `region` fields in `spec.serverless` accept the following values:

| Cloud   | Region                       | [Supported plans](https://www.pinecone.io/pricing/) | [Availability phase](/guides/changelog-feature-availability) |
| ------- | ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `aws`   | `us-east-1` (Virginia)       | Starter, Builder, Standard, Enterprise              | General availability                                         |
| `aws`   | `us-west-2` (Oregon)         | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |
| `aws`   | `eu-west-1` (Ireland)        | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |
| `aws`   | `eu-central-1` (Frankfurt)   | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |
| `aws`   | `ap-southeast-1` (Singapore) | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |
| `gcp`   | `us-central1` (Iowa)         | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |
| `gcp`   | `europe-west4` (Netherlands) | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |
| `azure` | `eastus2` (Virginia)         | Builder, Standard, Enterprise                       | General availability                                         |

The cloud and region can't be changed after a serverless index is created.

:::callout{intent="note"}
On the Starter plan, you can create serverless indexes in the `us-east-1` region of AWS only. To create indexes in other regions, [upgrade to the Builder, Standard, or Enterprise plan](/guides/admin-assistant-upgrade-billing-plan).
:::

For BYOC indexes, set `spec.byoc.environment` to the environment ID provisioned for your account instead. See [Bring Your Own Cloud](/guides/move-to-production-bring-your-own-cloud) for details.

```shell curl theme={null}
# EXAMPLE REQUEST 1: Serverless index (on-demand)
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
curl -s "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: 2026-04" \
  -d '{
        "name": "example-serverless-index",
        "vector_type": "dense",
        "dimension": 1536,
        "metric": "cosine",
        "spec": {
            "serverless": {
                "cloud": "aws",
                "region": "us-east-1"
            }
        },
        "tags": {
            "tag0": "value0"
        },
        "deletion_protection": "disabled"
      }'

# EXAMPLE REQUEST 2: Serverless index (dedicated)
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
curl "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: 2026-04" \
  -d '{
		"name": "example-serverless-dedicated-index",
		"dimension": 1536,
		"metric": "cosine",
		"deletion_protection": "enabled",
		"tags": {
			"tag0": "value0"
		},
		"vector_type": "dense",
		"spec": {
			"serverless": {
				"cloud": "aws",
				"region": "us-east-1",
				"read_capacity": {
					"mode": "Dedicated",
					"dedicated": {
						"node_type": "b1",
						"scaling": "Manual",
						"manual": {
							"shards": 2,
							"replicas": 1
						}
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}'

# EXAMPLE REQUEST 3: BYOC index
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
curl -s "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: 2026-04" \
  -d '{
        "name": "example-byoc-index",
        "vector_type": "dense",
        "dimension": 1536,
        "metric": "cosine",
        "spec": {
            "byoc": {
                "environment": "aws-us-east-1-b921"
            }
        },
        "tags": {
            "tag0": "value0"
        },
        "deletion_protection": "disabled"
      }'
```

```jsonc curl theme={null}
// EXAMPLE RESPONSE 1: Serverless index (on-demand)
{
  "name": "example-serverless-ondemand-index",
  "vector_type": "dense",
  "metric": "cosine",
  "dimension": 1536,
  "status": {
    "ready": false,
    "state": "Initializing"
  },
  "host": "example-serverless-ondemand-index-bhnyigt.svc.aped-4627-b74a.pinecone.io",
  "spec": {
    "serverless": {
      "region": "us-east-1",
      "cloud": "aws",
      "read_capacity": {
        "mode": "OnDemand",
        "status": {
          "state": "Ready",
          "current_shards": null,
          "current_replicas": null
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "deletion_protection": "disabled",
  "tags": {
    "tag0": "value0"
  }
}

// EXAMPLE RESPONSE 2: Serverless index (dedicated)
{
	"name": "example-serverless-dedicated-index",
	"vector_type": "dense",
	"metric": "cosine",
	"dimension": 1536,
	"status": {
		"ready": false,
		"state": "Initializing"
	},
	"host": "example-serverless-dedicated-index-bhnyigt.svc.aped-4627-b74a.pinecone.io",
	"spec": {
		"serverless": {
			"region": "us-east-1",
			"cloud": "aws",
			"read_capacity": {
				"mode": "Dedicated",
				"dedicated": {
					"node_type": "b1",
					"scaling": "Manual",
					"manual": {
						"shards": 2,
						"replicas": 1
					}
				},
				"status": {
					"state": "Migrating",
					"current_shards": null,
					"current_replicas": null
				}
			}
		}
	},
	"deletion_protection": "enabled",
	"tags": {
		"tag0": "value0"
	}
}

// EXAMPLE RESPONSE 3: BYOC index
{
    "name": "example-byoc-index",
    "vector_type": "dense",
    "metric": "cosine",
    "dimension": 1536,
    "status": {
        "ready": true,
        "state": "Ready"
    },
    "host": "example-byoc-index-govk0nt.svc.private.aped-4627-b74a.pinecone.io",
    "spec": {
        "byoc": {
            "environment": "aws-us-east-1-b921"
        }
    },
    "deletion_protection": "disabled",
    "tags": {
        "tag0": "value0"
    }
}
```

`POST /indexes`

:::code-group
```bash title="cURL"
curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.pinecone.io/indexes \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "name": "example-index",
  "dimension": 1536,
  "metric": "<string>",
  "deletion_protection": "<string>",
  "tags": {
    "tag0": "val0",
    "tag1": "val1"
  },
  "spec": {
    "serverless": {
      "cloud": "aws",
      "region": "us-east-1",
      "read_capacity": null,
      "source_collection": "movie-embeddings",
      "source_backup_id": "670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
      "schema": null
    }
  },
  "vector_type": "<string>"
}'
```

```json title="201"
{
  "name": "example-index",
  "dimension": 1536,
  "metric": "<string>",
  "host": "semantic-search-c01b5b5.svc.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io",
  "private_host": "semantic-search-c01b5b5.svc.private.us-west1-gcp.pinecone.io",
  "deletion_protection": "<string>",
  "tags": {
    "tag0": "val0",
    "tag1": "val1"
  },
  "embed": {
    "field_map": {
      "text": "your-text-field"
    },
    "metric": "cosine",
    "model": "multilingual-e5-large",
    "read_parameters": {
      "input_type": "query",
      "truncate": "NONE"
    },
    "write_parameters": {
      "input_type": "passage"
    }
  },
  "spec": {
    "pod": {
      "environment": "us-east-1-aws",
      "metadata_config": {
        "indexed": [
          "genre",
          "title",
          "imdb_rating"
        ]
      },
      "pod_type": "p1.x1",
      "pods": 1,
      "replicas": 1,
      "shards": 1
    }
  },
  "status": {
    "ready": true,
    "state": "ScalingUpPodSize"
  },
  "vector_type": "<string>"
}
```
:::

## Authorizations

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

## Headers

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

## Body

- `name` (body, string, required) — 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 '-'.
- `dimension` (body, integer) — The dimensions of the vectors to be inserted in the index.
- `metric` (body, string) — The distance metric to be used for similarity search. You can use 'euclidean', 'cosine', or 'dotproduct'. If the 'vector\_type' is 'sparse', the metric must be 'dotproduct'. If the `vector_type` is `dense`, the metric defaults to 'cosine'. Possible values: `cosine`, `euclidean`, or `dotproduct`.
- `deletion_protection` (body, string) — Whether [deletion protection](/guides/manage-data-manage-indexes#configure-deletion-protection) is enabled/disabled for the index. Possible values: `disabled` or `enabled`.
- `tags` (body, object) — Custom user tags added to an index. Keys must be 80 characters or less. Values must be 120 characters or less. Keys must be alphanumeric, '_', or '-'. Values must be alphanumeric, ';', '@', '_', '-', '.', '+', or ' '. To unset a key, set the value to be an empty string.
- `spec` (body, object, required) — The spec object defines how the index should be deployed. For serverless indexes, you define only the [cloud and region](/guides/index-data-create-an-index#cloud-regions) where the index should be hosted. For pod-based indexes, you define the [environment](/guides/using-pods-understanding-pod-based-indexes#pod-environments) where the index should be
- `vector_type` (body, string) — The index vector type. You can use 'dense' or 'sparse'. If 'dense', the vector dimension must be specified. If 'sparse', the vector dimension should not be specified.

## Response

- `201` — The index 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 pod quota.
- `404` — A resource required to create the index was not found. This includes an unknown cloud or region for serverless indexes, or a backup ID that does not exist when `spec.serverless.source_backup_id` is set.
- `409` — Index of given name already exists.
- `412` — Cross-region restore is not available for the backup's source region.
- `422` — Unprocessable entity. The request body could not be deserialized.
- `500` — Internal server error.

## Related pages

- [List indexes](./database-2026-07-control-plane-list-indexes.md)
- [Create an index](./database-2026-07-control-plane-create-index.md)
- [Create an index with integrated embedding](./database-2026-07-control-plane-create-for-model.md)
- [Describe an index](./database-2026-07-control-plane-describe-index.md)
- [Delete an index](./database-2026-07-control-plane-delete-index.md)
- [Configure an index](./database-2026-07-control-plane-configure-index.md)
- [Get index stats](./database-2026-07-data-plane-describeindexstats.md)
- [List indexes](./database-2026-04-control-plane-list-indexes.md)
- [Create an index with integrated embedding](./database-2026-04-control-plane-create-for-model.md)
- [Describe an index](./database-2026-04-control-plane-describe-index.md)

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