Describe a backup
Get a description of a backup.
PINECONE_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
BACKUP_ID="8c85e612-ed1c-4f97-9f8c-8194e07bcf71"
curl -X GET "https://api.pinecone.io/backups/$BACKUP_ID" \
-H "Api-Key: $PINECONE_API_KEY" \
-H "X-Pinecone-Api-Version: 2026-07" \
-H "accept: application/json"GET /backups/{backup_id}
{
"backup_id": "670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
"cloud": "aws",
"created_at": "2025-03-15T10:30:00.000Z",
"description": "Monthly backup of production index",
"name": "backup-2025-03-15",
"namespace_count": 3,
"record_count": 120000,
"region": "us-east-1",
"schema": {
"fields": {
"embedding": {
"dimension": 1536,
"metric": "cosine",
"type": "dense_vector"
}
}
},
"size_bytes": 10000000,
"source_index_id": "670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440001",
"source_index_name": "my-index",
"status": "Ready",
"tags": {
"environment": "production",
"type": "monthly"
}
}{
"error": {
"code": "PERMISSION_DENIED",
"message": "Access denied: Permission control::backups::list is required"
},
"status": 403
}{
"error": {
"code": "NOT_FOUND",
"message": "Backup bkp_123abc not found."
},
"status": 404
}{
"error": {
"code": "UNKNOWN",
"message": "Internal server error"
},
"status": 500
}Authorizations
Section titled “Authorizations”Api-KeystringrequiredAn API Key is required to call Pinecone APIs. Get yours from the console.
Headers
Section titled “Headers”X-Pinecone-Api-VersionstringrequiredRequired date-based version header
Path Parameters
Section titled “Path Parameters”backup_idstringrequiredThe ID of the backup to describe.
Response
Section titled “Response”200 — Configuration information and deployment status of the backup.
The BackupModel describes the configuration and status of a Pinecone backup.
backup_idstringrequiredUnique identifier for the backup.
Example: 670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440001
source_index_namestringrequiredName of the index from which the backup was taken.
Example: my-index
source_index_idstringrequiredID of the index from which the backup was taken.
Example: 670e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000
source_index_deleted_at?stringThe deletion timestamp when the source index has been deleted. Not present for backups associated with an active index.
Example: 2024-03-05T12:00:00.000Z
name?stringOptional user-defined name for the backup.
Example: backup-2025-02-04
description?stringOptional description providing context for the backup.
Example: Backup before bulk update.
statusstringrequiredCurrent status of the backup.
Example: Ready
cloudstringrequiredCloud provider where the backup is stored.
Example: aws
regionstringrequiredCloud region where the backup is stored.
Example: us-east-1
schema?objectThe schema of a Pinecone index. The schema defines the typed fields that documents in the index can contain, including vector fields, semantic text fields, and metadata fields.
Show child attributes
fieldsobjectrequiredA map of field names to their configurations. Indexes that are served by the vectors API — created with the reserved _values / _sparse_values schema, or created by an earlier API version from dimension, metric, and vector_type — report their vector fields under the reserved names _values (dense) and _sparse_values (sparse), and any metadata fields configured for filtering as legacy fields carrying only filterable. Dense vectors-API indexes always report both _values and _sparse_values, regardless of how they were created.
record_count?integerTotal number of records in the backup.
Example: 120000
namespace_count?integerNumber of namespaces in the backup.
Example: 3
size_bytes?integerSize of the backup in bytes.
Example: 10000000
tags?object | nullCustom user tags added to an index, at most 20 per index. Keys must be 80 characters or less and alphanumeric, '', or '-'. Values must be 120 characters or less and consist of printable ASCII characters or spaces. To unset a key, set the value to be an empty string. null in responses when the index has no tags.
created_at?stringTimestamp when the backup was created.
Example: 2025-02-04T10:30:00.000Z