# Create a backup of an index

The backup records the schema of the index it is taken from and reports it as `schema`. An index created from the backup with [Create index from backup](/guides/database-2026-07-control-plane-create-index-from-backup) inherits that schema.

```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: 2026-07" \
    -d '{
      "name": "example-backup", 
      "description": "Monthly backup of production index"
      }'
```

`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": "backup-2025-03-15",
  "description": "<string>"
}'
```

```json title="200"
{
  "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",
  "schema": {
    "fields": {
      "embedding": {
        "dimension": 1536,
        "metric": "cosine",
        "type": "dense_vector"
      },
      "title": {
        "full_text_search": {
          "language": "en",
          "stemming": false,
          "stop_words": false
        },
        "type": "string"
      }
    }
  },
  "record_count": 120000,
  "namespace_count": 3,
  "size_bytes": 10000000,
  "tags": {
    "tag0": "val0",
    "tag1": "val1"
  },
  "created_at": "2025-02-04T10:30:00.000Z"
}
```
:::

## 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. Must be 1-45 characters long, start and end with an alphanumeric character, and consist only of lower case alphanumeric characters or `-`; any other value is rejected with `400`.
- `description` (body, string) — A description of the backup.

## Response

- `200` — The backup was created. The returned backup starts in status `Initializing`; poll it until the status is `Ready`.
- `400` — Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters.
- `401` — Unauthorized. Possible causes: missing or invalid API key.
- `403` — Forbidden. Possible causes: the organization's plan does not include backups, or the project's backup quota is exhausted.
- `422` — Unprocessable entity. The request body could not be deserialized.
- `500` — Internal server error.

## Related pages

- [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)
- [Describe a collection](./database-2026-07-control-plane-describe-collection.md)

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