# What Does This Cost?

Short answer: you can do this entire guide for free or near-free.

## Claude Code

You need a Claude subscription that includes Claude Code.

- **Claude Pro ($20/month):** Includes Claude Code with usage limits.
- **Claude Max ($100/month or $200/month):** Higher limits.

If you already have a Claude subscription, there is no extra cost.
Claude Code handles building the app AND answering questions
based on your search results.

## Google Gemini Embedding 2 (for embeddings only)

We use Google's Gemini Embedding 2 to convert your content into
searchable embeddings. We do NOT use Gemini as a language model.
Claude does the thinking. Gemini just creates the fingerprints.

- **Free tier:** Available through Google AI Studio with rate limits
  (1,500 requests per day)
- **Paid:** $0.20 per million tokens

For this guide with 7 example files, you will use roughly 10-20
requests total. The free tier is more than enough.

Why Gemini Embedding 2 and not Voyage (Anthropic's embeddings)?
Because Gemini Embedding 2 supports text, images, AND video natively.
Voyage supports text and images but not video. For a multimodal guide,
the broadest format support wins.

## Pinecone Vector Database (free tier)

Pinecone's free tier includes:

- **Free:** 1 project, 5 indexes, 100,000 vectors
- **No credit card required**

For this guide, we store about 15-30 vectors (one per chunk of
content). You could store thousands of documents and still stay
within the free tier.

## Total cost for this guide

| Service | What it does | Cost |
|---------|-------------|------|
| Claude Code | Builds the app, answers questions | Part of your subscription |
| Gemini Embedding 2 | Converts content to searchable vectors | Free (well within free tier) |
| Pinecone | Stores and searches vectors | Free (well within free tier) |
| **Total** | | **$0 extra** |

## What if you want to scale up?

If you move beyond the example and want to index thousands of
documents, here is what the costs look like:

| Scale | Gemini embeddings | Pinecone | Monthly total |
|-------|-------------------|----------|---------------|
| 100 documents | Free | Free | $0 |
| 1,000 documents | ~$0.50 | Free | ~$0.50 |
| 10,000 documents | ~$5 | Free | ~$5 |
| 100,000 documents | ~$50 | $70+ (Starter plan) | ~$120 |

For most personal and small business use cases, you will stay
comfortably in the free tier.