Listopedia

Snowflake

Multi-cloud warehouse billed in per-second credits, with US$4.68bn revenue

Overview

Snowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW) sells a managed cloud data platform whose core is a SQL data warehouse with storage separated from compute. Revenue for the fiscal year ended 31 January 2026 was US$4.68 billion, up 29 percent from US$3.63 billion the previous year[3]. A Snowflake account can be hosted on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure[18].

Compute runs in virtual warehouses of fixed sizes that consume credits while running; Snowflake bills per second with a 60-second minimum each time a warehouse starts, and its documentation gives examples of a Small warehouse consuming two credits an hour, a Medium four and a Large eight[2]. Cloud-services work such as authentication and metadata management also consumes credits, but is charged only above a daily threshold[2]. The price per credit depends on edition and region and is listed in Snowflake’s pricing guide[2].

Four editions are offered: Standard; Enterprise, with features for large organisations; Business Critical, formerly Enterprise for Sensitive Data, with enhanced security, protected-health-information support for HIPAA and HITRUST and account failover; and Virtual Private Snowflake, an isolated environment for organisations such as financial institutions with the strictest requirements[1]. Snowflake’s strengths are ease of administration, multi-cloud availability and data sharing. Its main drawback is cost control: credit consumption can rise quickly without warehouse sizing and auto-suspend discipline.

Snowflake features

  • Separate storage and per-second compute
  • Virtual warehouses in fixed sizes
  • Four editions up to Virtual Private Snowflake
  • HIPAA/HITRUST support (Business Critical)
  • Account failover and failback
  • Cloud-services layer for metadata and security

Snowflake pricing

Consumption billing in credits (per second, 60-second minimum per start); credit price varies by edition and region per Snowflake's pricing guide; storage billed separately.

Snowflake strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Minimal administration
  • Clear edition structure for security needs
  • Fast revenue growth indicates wide adoption
  • Per-second billing
  • Audited, quarterly-reported financials and customer metrics
  • Little infrastructure to manage; runs on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

Limitations

  • Credit costs can escalate without governance
  • Credit price not shown in documentation
  • Cloud-services charges above threshold
  • Consumption billing can rise quickly with poorly optimised queries
  • Platform rather than consultancy: implementation is done by the customer or partners
  • Competes directly with the cloud providers whose infrastructure it runs on

Appears in

Snowflake alternatives and competitors

Alternatives to Snowflake: companies ranked in the same lists.

Is this your company?

Update the description, logo, image and link through the submission form. Editors review every change.

Update this listing

Is your company missing from a list?

Send your logo, description and link. Editors review every submission, and approved listings are clearly labelled.

Add your company