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 inherits that schema.

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

• X-Pinecone-Api-Version (header, string, required) — Required date-based version header
• index_name (path, string, required) — Name of the index to backup

• 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.

• 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.