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: 2026-07"
```

`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,
  "indexFullness": 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 and Starter indexes do not support filtering `describe_index_stats` by metadata, and reject a request carrying a non-empty filter.

## Response

- `200` — A successful response.
- `400` — Bad request. The request body included invalid request parameters.
- `401` — Unauthorized. Possible causes: missing or invalid API key.
- `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)
- [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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