Costs to consider

Unlike on-premises databases, which are purchased upfront and used for the duration of their life cycle, Snowflake employs a consumption-based model known as variable spend (commonly referred to as pay-as-you-go). Variable spend enables teams to do rapid prototyping or experiment with proofs of concept without any upfront investment and to control their costs by monitoring and adjusting usage patterns. Here, we will break down the types of costs associated with using the Snowflake platform so that we can make informed design decisions later on.

Let us begin with the cost of storing data in the cloud.

Storage costs

Snowflake bills its customers based on the daily average of the data stored in the platform. Since Snowflake’s services layer automatically compresses data for optimal storage, customers enjoy lower storage costs without sacrificing performance. However, it is not just the raw data that counts toward storage quotas. Time Travel and fail-safe...