Returns detailed information about a specific index, including its schema, status, host URL, and read capacity. Poll this endpoint after [`POST /indexes`](/guides/database-2026-07-control-plane-create-index) until `status.ready: true` (and, for `Dedicated` read capacity, `read_capacity.status.state: "Ready"`) before performing data plane operations.

```python Python theme={null}
# pip install --upgrade pinecone
import os
from pinecone import Pinecone

pc = Pinecone(api_key=os.environ["PINECONE_API_KEY"])

index_model = pc.indexes.describe(name="articles")
print(index_model.status, index_model.schema)

host = index_model.host
```

```shell curl theme={null}
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
curl "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/articles" \
  -H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07"
```

`GET /indexes/{index_name}`

:::code-group
```bash title="cURL"
curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.pinecone.io/indexes/{index_name} \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>'
```

```json title="200"
{
  "deletion_protection": "disabled",
  "deployment": {
    "cloud": "aws",
    "deployment_type": "managed",
    "region": "us-east-1"
  },
  "host": "my-index-abc123.svc.pinecone.io",
  "name": "my-index",
  "read_capacity": {
    "mode": "OnDemand",
    "status": {
      "state": "Ready"
    }
  },
  "schema": {
    "fields": {
      "embedding": {
        "dimension": 1536,
        "metric": "cosine",
        "type": "dense_vector"
      },
      "title": {
        "full_text_search": {
          "language": "en",
          "stemming": false,
          "stop_words": false
        },
        "type": "string"
      }
    }
  },
  "status": {
    "ready": true,
    "state": "Ready"
  }
}
```
:::

## Authorizations

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

## Path Parameters

- `index_name` (path, string, required) — The name of the index to be described.

## Headers

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

## Response

- `200` — Configuration information and deployment status of the index.
- `401` — Unauthorized. Possible causes: missing or invalid API key.
- `404` — Index not found.
- `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)
- [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)
- [Describe an index](./database-2026-04-control-plane-describe-index.md)

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