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Overview

All API calls to your Pinecone index authenticate with an API key for the project containing the target index. If you are using a client, like the Python or Node.js clients, you can initialize a client object, which allows you to provide your API key in one place and use it multiple times. If you are making HTTP requests with a tool like cURL, the HTTP request must include a header that specifies the API key. This topic describes each method.

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Finding your Pinecone API key

To find your API key, open the Pinecone console and click API Keys. This view also displays the environment for your project.

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Initialize a client

To initialize a client with your API key, use the following code: 
from pinecone import Pinecone

pc = Pinecone(api_key='YOUR_API_KEY')
Function calls with this client use the authentication information provided at initialization. For example: 
# Creates an index using the API key stored in the client 'pinecone'.
pc.create_index(
    name="auth-guide",
    dimension=8,
    metric="euclidean",
    spec=ServerlessSpec(
        cloud='aws', 
        region='us-west-2'
    ) 
)

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Add headers to an HTTP request

When issuing an HTTP request to Pinecone, each request must contain an Api-Key header that specifies a valid API key and must be encoded as JSON with the Content-Type: application/json header.
Curl
curl -s -X POST "https://api.pinecone.io/indexes" \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   -H "Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
   -d '{
         "name":  "auth-guide",
         "dimension": 8,
         "metric": "euclidean",
         "spec": {
            "serverless": {
               "cloud":"aws",
               "region": "us-west-2"
            }
         }
      }'

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Next steps