Amazon EMR vs Snowflake comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.8, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.4% mindshare in CDW, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 16.1% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

Amazon EMR

Read 25 Amazon EMR reviews

1,599 Views
831 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 103 Snowflake reviews

8,769 Views
5,875 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Amazon EMR

Snowflake

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 26, 2025

Amazon EMR and Snowflake are major competitors in the data processing solutions category. Snowflake appears to have the upper hand in terms of efficiency and scalability, while Amazon EMR is favored for cost-effectiveness.

Features: Amazon EMR offers auto-scaling and robust integration capabilities, efficiently managing big data tasks with minimal maintenance needs. Snowflake provides flexible scalability, supports multiple data formats, and includes advanced features like zero-copy clone, simplifying data management and enhancing data sharing capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Amazon EMR could benefit from improved web support, increased ease of use for beginners, and better version update management. Snowflake needs clearer pricing models and stronger integration with machine learning functions as well as enhancements in governance, reporting, and ETL capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon EMR excels in public cloud deployment and generally positive customer service ratings, despite some inconsistencies. Snowflake offers deployment flexibility across public and private cloud options, though it receives mixed feedback on technical support consistency.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon EMR is cost-effective when EC2 fees are well-managed, though unmanaged costs can rise substantially. Snowflake's pricing is generally perceived as higher but transparent and flexible with a pay-as-you-go model, offering value proportional to its features. Both platforms report high ROI, particularly for enterprises transitioning from on-premise systems.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon EMR vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Snowflake

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

ROI

Sentiment score

4.8

Amazon EMR offers cost savings and ROI benefits, with some users experiencing up to 20% cost reduction and high returns.

Sentiment score

6.2

Users find Snowflake challenging for ROI calculation, but it offers productivity gains, cost reduction, and valuable insights.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.9

Amazon EMR customer service varies, with generally responsive support despite reported delays and occasional gaps in integration assistance.

Sentiment score

5.7

Snowflake customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though improvements in timeliness and service-level agreements are suggested.

They help with billing, cost determination, IAM properties, security compliance, and deployment and migration activities.

Mirza Mujtaba Baig

Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs

We get all call support, screen sharing support, and immediate support, so there are no problems.

reviewer1343079

Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

I would rate the technical support from Amazon as ten out of ten.

reviewer2043696

Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

I received great support in migrating data to Snowflake, with quick responses and innovative solutions.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

I am satisfied with the work of technical support from Snowflake; they are responsive and helpful.

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

The technical support from Snowflake is very good, nice, and efficient.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.4

Amazon EMR efficiently scales for businesses, offering customizable cluster options to manage diverse data sizes and enterprise demands.

Sentiment score

7.7

Snowflake offers seamless, flexible scalability for storage and computing, supporting diverse business needs with automatic cloud-based infrastructure scaling.

Scalability can be provisioned using the auto-scaling feature, EC2 instances, on-demand instances, and storage locations like block storage, S3, or file storage.

Mirza Mujtaba Baig

Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

Snowflake is very scalable and has a dedicated team constantly improving the product.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

The billing doubles with size increase, but processing does not necessarily speed up accordingly.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Recently, Snowflake has introduced streaming capabilities, real-time and dynamic tables, along with various connectors.

reviewer2403603

Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.7

Amazon EMR is praised for stability and reliability, with high ratings due to its configurability and robust features.

Sentiment score

8.2

Snowflake offers reliable, fast performance and high stability, with users praising its dependability and minimal disruptions.

Regular updates, patch installations, monitoring, logging, alerting, and disaster recovery activities are crucial for maintaining stability.

Mirza Mujtaba Baig

Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

Snowflake is very stable, especially when used with AWS.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Snowflake as a SaaS offering means that maintenance isn't an issue for me.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Room For Improvement

Amazon EMR users face challenges with customization, stability, onboarding, cost optimization, task speed, and demand enhanced integration and security.

Snowflake needs better UI, analytics, integration, documentation, governance, AI features, and cost management solutions to address user concerns.

The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2.

reviewer1343079

Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

There is room for improvement with respect to retries, handling the volume of data on S3 buckets, cluster provisioning, scaling, termination, security, and integration between services like S3, Glue, Lake Formation, and DynamoDB.

Mirza Mujtaba Baig

Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs

I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.

reviewer2043696

Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

Enhancements in user experience for data observability and quality checks would be beneficial, as these tasks currently require SQL coding, which might be challenging for some users.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

What things you are going with to ask the support and how we manage the relationship matters a lot.

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

If more connectors were brought in and more visibility features were added, particularly around cost tracking in the FinOps area, it would be beneficial.

reviewer2403603

Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Setup Cost

Amazon EMR pricing is variable, potentially costly, but users can manage expenses with strategic resource and instance management.

Snowflake's pricing model offers affordability and flexibility but challenges with cost predictability and potential high processing fees.

Costs are involved based on cluster resources, data volumes, EC2 instances, instance sizes, Kubernetes, Docker services, storage, and data transfers.

Mirza Mujtaba Baig

Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs

I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.

reviewer2043696

Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating resource usage.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Valuable Features

Amazon EMR offers scalable, cost-effective big data management with integration, flexibility, security, and seamless Hadoop and Spark processing.

Snowflake is scalable and flexible with features like zero-copy cloning, time travel, and integrated security, enhancing efficiency and accessibility.

Amazon EMR helps in scalability, real-time and batch processing of data, handling efficient data sources, and managing data lakes, data stores, and data marts on file systems and in S3 buckets.

Mirza Mujtaba Baig

Lead AWS Data Engineer at Fission Labs

Amazon EMR provides out-of-the-box functionality because we can deploy and get Spark functionality over Hadoop.

reviewer1343079

Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The features at Amazon EMR that I have found most valuable are fully customizable functions.

reviewer2043696

Senior Technical Engineer at a transportation company with 5,001-10,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon EMR report

We had a comparison with Databricks and Snowflake a few months back, and this auto-scaling takes an edge within Snowflake; that's what our observation reflects.

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

I have used the Snowflake Zero-Copy Cloning feature in the past while prototyping data in lower environments. This feature is helpful as it saves a lot of time during the data replication process.

reviewer2403603

Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EMR

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (3rd)

Snowflake

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (5th), AI Software Development (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon EMR is 3.4%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 16.1%, down from 22.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Snowflake	16.1%
Amazon EMR	3.4%
Other	80.5%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

reviewer1343079

Senior Chief Engineer (Enterprise System Presales/Postsales) at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Has simplified ETL workflows with on-demand processing but needs improved cost efficiency and visibility

I have used AWS Glue with S3 for making tables and databases, but regarding Amazon EMR, I do not remember much as we are currently using it very minimally. This is my observation: In EKS, we have had to deploy by ourselves because EKS does not provide the Hadoop framework, Spark, Hive, and everything, but we have completed all the deployment ourselves. Whereas Amazon EMR provides all these things. The cost factor differs significantly. When you run Spark application on EKS, you run at the pod level, so you can control the compute cost. But in Amazon EMR, when you have to run one application, you have to launch the entire EC2. In Qubole, the interface was very good. I could see many details because in Amazon EMR console, very few details are available. In Qubole, at one link, you can get all the details of what is happening, how the processes are running, and the cost decreased by using Qubole. I found Qubole more user-friendly and cost-effective. From the security point of view, we had to open some access rights to Qubole, which might be a drawback in comparison to Amazon EMR which is native to AWS.

Read full review

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

Have prioritized security while managing multi-agent data migration and cloud adoption

We utilize Time Travel with Snowflake because this is a very useful feature. Everyone finds it crucial because in conventional data platforms, it's very difficult to handle these kinds of things. This feature is essential, though I don't have the use cases currently; it is just there for implementation. Regarding Snowflake's automated scaling and suspension features, this auto-scaling is very significant. We had a comparison with Databricks and Snowflake a few months back, and this auto-scaling takes an edge within Snowflake; that's what our observation reflects.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Educational Organization

13%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	58

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EMR?

I would rate the price for Amazon EMR, where one is high and ten is low, as a good one.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EMR?

I feel some lack of functionality in Amazon EMR. I have thoughts on what would be great to see in the product, such as AI/ML features or additional options.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EMR?

I find it easy to integrate Amazon EMR with other AWS services like S3 or EC2 for data processing needs. I would rate this review as eight out of ten.

See all answers

What do you like most about Snowflake?

The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?

It is complicated to understand how requests impact warehouse size. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Databricks ( /products/databricks-reviews ), Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Snowflake?

Snowflake is currently stable, but it can be improved further. They have a couple of information schemas that can track account usage. If more connectors were brought in and more visibility feature...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Amazon EMR

Compared 11% of the time

Apache Spark vs Amazon EMR

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Amazon EMR

Compared 8% of the time

Cloudera Data Platform vs Amazon EMR

Compared 6% of the time

AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon EMR

Compared 6% of the time

More Amazon EMR Competitors

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Snowflake

Compared 5% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs Snowflake

Compared 4% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR

January 2026

Download Amazon EMR product report

Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

January 2026

Download Snowflake product report

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) is a web service that makes it easy to quickly and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. Amazon EMR simplifies big data processing, providing a managed Hadoop framework that makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective for you to distribute and process vast amounts of your data across dynamically scalable Amazon EC2 instances.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Snowflake provides a modern data warehousing solution with features designed for seamless integration, scalability, and consumption-based pricing. It handles large datasets efficiently, making it a market leader for businesses migrating to the cloud.

Snowflake offers a flexible architecture that separates storage and compute resources, supporting efficient ETL jobs. Known for scalability and ease of use, it features built-in time zone conversion and robust data sharing capabilities. Its enhanced security, performance, and ability to handle semi-structured data are notable. Users suggest improvements in UI, pricing, on-premises integration, and data science functions, while calling for better transaction performance and machine learning capabilities. Users benefit from effective SQL querying, real-time analytics, and sharing options, supporting comprehensive data analysis with tools like Tableau and Power BI.

What are Snowflake's Key Features?

Scalability: Easily adjusts to handle growing data volumes.
Seamless Integration: Works with a wide range of platforms.
Consumption-Based Costs: Pay only for what you use.
Time Travel: Access historical data effortlessly.
Data Sharing: Secure and efficient sharing of datasets.
Time Zone Conversion: Built-in feature for global operations.
Security: Robust measures to protect sensitive information.
Compute and Storage Separation: Independent scaling for optimal performance.

What Benefits Should You Look for?

Cost Efficiency: Optimized pricing models for minimal waste.
Enhanced Performance: Fast queries and processing times.
Flexibility: Handles both structured and semi-structured data.
Analytics Capabilities: Supports advanced data analysis and reporting.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Snowflake's flexible data warehousing and analytics capabilities facilitate cloud migration, streamline data storage, and allow organizations to consolidate data from multiple sources for advanced insights and AI-driven strategies. Its integration with analytics tools supports comprehensive data analysis and reporting tasks.

Snowflake Computing

Sample Customers

Yelp

Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EMR vs. Snowflake

December 2025

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