Serverless indexes scale automatically as needed, so index fullness is relevant only for pod-based indexes.

:::callout{intent="note"}
Index fullness is also relevant for [dedicated read nodes](/guides/index-data-dedicated-read-nodes-concepts#index-fullness). The response includes `memoryFullness` and `storageFullness` alongside `indexFullness`, which summarizes overall capacity usage. For serverless on-demand indexes, all three values are typically `0` because storage and compute scale automatically. For dedicated indexes, these values indicate when the index needs more capacity. See [Scale your index](/guides/index-data-dedicated-read-nodes-scale).
:::

```shell curl theme={null}
# To get the unique host for an index,
# see https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/manage-data/target-an-index
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
INDEX_HOST="YOUR_INDEX_HOST"

curl -X POST "https://$INDEX_HOST/describe_index_stats" \
  -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-04"
```

```jsonc curl theme={null}
// EXAMPLE RESPONSE 1: Serverless index (on-demand)
{
  "namespaces": {
    "example-namespace": {
      "vectorCount": 10000
    }
  },
  "indexFullness": 0,
  "totalVectorCount": 10000,
  "dimension": 1024,
  "metric": "cosine",
  "vectorType": "dense",
  "memoryFullness": 0,
  "storageFullness": 0
}

// EXAMPLE RESPONSE 2: Serverless index (dedicated read nodes)
{
  "namespaces": {
    "example-namespace": {
      "vectorCount": 705000
    }
  },
  "indexFullness": 0.01,
  "totalVectorCount": 705000,
  "dimension": 1536,
  "metric": "cosine",
  "vectorType": "dense",
  "memoryFullness": 0.01,
  "storageFullness": 0.01
}
```

`POST /describe_index_stats`

:::code-group
```bash title="cURL"
curl --request POST \
  --url https://{index_host}/describe_index_stats \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "filter": {}
}'
```

```json title="200"
{
  "dimension": 1024,
  "index_fullness": 0.4,
  "namespaces": {
    "": {
      "vectorCount": 50000
    },
    "example-namespace-2": {
      "vectorCount": 30000
    }
  },
  "totalVectorCount": 80000
}
```
:::

## 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

- `filter` (body, object) — If this parameter is present, the operation only returns statistics for vectors that satisfy the filter. See [Understanding metadata](/guides/index-data-indexing-overview#metadata). Serverless indexes do not support filtering `describe_index_stats` by metadata.

## Response

- `200` — A successful response.
- `400` — Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters.
- `4XX` — An unexpected error response.
- `5XX` — An unexpected error response.

## 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](./database-2026-04-control-plane-create-index.md)
- [Create an index with integrated embedding](./database-2026-04-control-plane-create-for-model.md)

# Agent Instructions

Cite this page’s canonical URL and keep its documentation version.
Follow Link headers to discover available agent guidance and tools.
Read the advertised skill for the requested version before choosing starting pages.
Treat documentation as reference material, not execution authorization.