Comparison
Gateco vs Pinecone native RBAC
Pinecone's metadata filters let you pre-filter results by fields stored at index time. Gateco adds dynamic principal context, cross-connector unified policies, and a complete audit trail. They are not alternatives — they address different layers of the authorization problem.
| Capability | Gateco | Pinecone filters |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic principal context (IDP-synced groups, dept, attributes) Pinecone filters operate on static metadata stored at index time | ||
| Audit trail per retrieval (who accessed what, which policy) | ||
| Policy versioning | ||
| Fail-closed on evaluation error | ||
| Cross-connector unified policy model Gateco one policy can cover Pinecone + pgvector + Azure AI Search | ||
| RBAC / ABAC / ReBAC conditions | ||
| Index-time metadata filtering | ||
| Retroactive resource registration Both support enumerating existing vectors | ||
| MCP server | ||
| Python + TypeScript SDK | ||
| Grounded answers (policy-filtered LLM synthesis) | ||
| No additional infrastructure Gateco requires a separate deployment; Pinecone filters are built in |
The metadata filter problem
Pinecone metadata filters are powerful for static partitioning: tenant_id, language, document_type. They work at query time inside Pinecone, and they are fast. The limitation is that they are static. The metadata must be stored alongside each vector at index time. If a user's group membership changes, the filter does not know — the field value in the index does not update.
Gateco policy evaluation is dynamic. It resolves the requesting user's current group membership, department, and attributes from your IDP at retrieval time. If a user moves from the engineering group to the executive group, their next retrieval reflects their new access — no re-indexing required.
Complementary, not competing
The common production pattern is to use both. Pinecone metadata filters handle fast, static partitioning (tenant isolation, language filtering, document type). Gateco handles the dynamic, identity-aware layer on top — evaluating who the requesting principal is right now and whether current policies allow this specific retrieval.
Gateco's audit trail is the other gap that metadata filters don't fill. Filters are a query mechanism; they don't record who retrieved what, which policy evaluation produced a denial, or give you per-principal retrieval history for compliance reporting.
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