Describe an index

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

# 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

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}

• X-Pinecone-Api-Version (header, string, required) — Required date-based version header
• index_name (path, string, required) — The name of the index to be described.

• 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.