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Snowflake

The AI Data Cloud for enterprise data warehousing

As of 30 August 2026, Snowflake is free to use. Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing platform that enables organizations to store and analyze large amounts of data. Softwr lists it under Machine Learning. Snowflake is made by Snowflake Inc., launched in 2012, available on Web, API.

Overview

What Snowflake does

Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing platform that enables organizations to store and analyze large amounts of data. It separates storage and compute, allowing for independent scaling. Snowflake supports structured and semi-structured data with near-unlimited concurrent workloads.

What people use it for

  • Cloud data warehousing and SQL analytics
  • Data engineering and ELT pipelines
  • Data sharing and marketplace
  • AI/ML workloads via Snowpark and Cortex
  • BI backend for tools such as Tableau and Power BI

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Snowflake.

  • No flat subscription price is published - cost varies by edition, cloud provider, and region and requires a separate calculator or credit-consumption table
  • Free trial is capped at $400 in credits or 30 days, whichever comes first, not a perpetual free tier
  • During the trial, certain features (external network access, hybrid tables, Openflow) are capped at 10 credits/day until a payment method is added
  • Total cost combines compute credits, storage, and data transfer billed separately

Cross-shopped

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Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Pricing

What Snowflake costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Standard

On request

  • Consumption-based, per-credit pricing

Enterprise

On request

  • Consumption-based, per-credit pricing

Business Critical

On request

  • Consumption-based, per-credit pricing

Virtual Private Snowflake

On request

  • Consumption-based, per-credit pricing

Capabilities

Features

  • Separated Compute/Storage

  • Near-zero Maintenance

  • Data Sharing

  • Time Travel

  • Cloning

  • Multi-cluster Warehouse

  • Semi-structured Data

  • dbt

    Integration with dbt

  • Fivetran

    Integration with Fivetran

  • Tableau

    Integration with Tableau

  • Looker

    Integration with Looker

  • Informatica

    Integration with Informatica

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

How is Snowflake priced?

Snowflake uses a consumption based model. Compute is billed in credits and storage is charged monthly on the average amount stored after compression. Capacity can be bought on demand or pre-paid.

Source
What Snowflake editions are there?

Snowflake sells four editions: Standard as the entry level offering, Enterprise for high growth and large scale customers, Business Critical for regulated industries handling sensitive data, and Virtual Private Snowflake for a completely isolated environment.

Source
Does Snowflake publish a per credit price?

Not on its pricing options page. Snowflake directs buyers to its Credit Consumption Table and a pricing calculator for the rates, which vary by edition, region and cloud provider.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Snowflake

Company
Snowflake Inc.
Based in
Menlo Park, CA, USA
Founders
Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, Marcin Zukowski

Timeline

Snowflake over time

  1. Milestone2020-09-16

    IPO on NYSE

    Source
  2. Funding2020-02-10$479m

    Series G funding

    Source
  3. Funding2018-10-11$450m

    Series F funding

    Source
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Snowflake, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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