> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://infino.ai/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Infino Cloud

> Infino Cloud is the Infino retrieval engine served as a fully-managed, object-storage-native hosted service. No servers to run or size, usage-based, same API as the open-source engine.

Infino Cloud is the same Infino retrieval engine you run locally, served as a
fully-managed, object-storage-native hosted service. You get full-text, vector, hybrid,
and SQL search over your data without running or sizing any storage or compute yourself.
Data lives as Apache Parquet on object storage, and you pay for what you use.

The API is identical to the open-source engine. A program written against
`connect("./data")` or `connect("s3://…")` moves to the hosted service by changing only
the `connect` target. See the [Quickstart](/docs/cloud/quickstart) for the one-line change.

## What you get

* **Fully managed.** No servers to provision, patch, or scale. Storage grows with your
  data, and table maintenance (`optimize` and `gc`) runs for you.
* **Object-storage-native.** Your data is stored as standard Parquet on object storage,
  the same open format the engine uses locally. No proprietary lock-in.
* **The same retrieval surface.** BM25, vector kNN, hybrid, and SQL over one copy of your
  data, indexed once. See [Search](/docs/guides/search).
* **Usage-based.** You pay for storage and query usage rather than for provisioned,
  always-on capacity.

## When to choose it vs. self-hosting

Infino is open source, and you can always run the engine yourself against local disk or
your own object-storage bucket. See [Connect & storage](/docs/guides/storage) for the
self-hosted backends.

**Choose Infino Cloud when** you want retrieval as a service: you would rather not
operate storage, tune caches, or run maintenance, and you want to go from an API key to a
working table in minutes. It suits teams that want to focus on their application rather
than on running infrastructure.

**Self-host the open-source engine when** you need the data and compute to stay entirely
inside your own environment, you already operate object storage, or you want to embed the
engine directly in your process. The code you write is the same either way, so you can
start self-hosted and move to the hosted service later without rewriting your application.

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quickstart" icon="cloud" href="/docs/cloud/quickstart">
    Connect, provision a database, and run your first search.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Authentication" icon="key" href="/docs/cloud/authentication">
    API keys, the Authorization header, and key rotation.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Architecture" icon="sitemap" href="/docs/cloud/architecture">
    How the service separates control, compute, and storage.
  </Card>

  <Card title="REST API" icon="server" href="/docs/api-reference">
    Not using an SDK? Drive Infino Cloud over plain HTTP — the OpenAPI reference.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>