AWS Lake Formation 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 #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.0% mindshare in CDW, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 16.1% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

AWS Lake Formation

Read 21 AWS Lake Formation reviews

1,416 Views
1,317 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 103 Snowflake reviews

8,769 Views
5,875 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Snowflake

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 26, 2025

Snowflake and AWS Lake Formation are key competitors in the cloud data management space. Snowflake appears to have the upper hand in scalability and performance due to its flexible architecture and advanced features.

Features: Snowflake offers superior scalability and performance in managing large datasets with a flexible architecture allowing easy scaling and high-speed processing. Its multi-formatted accessibility and advanced features like zero copy clone and time travel provide robust data management capabilities. AWS Lake Formation integrates tightly within the AWS ecosystem, offering effective security and governance.

Room for Improvement: Snowflake requires enhancements in geospatial queries, auto-ingest capabilities, and interface intuitiveness. Users also seek pricing transparency and better integration capabilities. AWS Lake Formation needs improved third-party service integration, responsive UI, and advanced data governance features. Both platforms could benefit from enriched analytical capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Snowflake is primarily deployed on Public Cloud with pay-as-you-go flexibility, appreciated for its simplicity. It offers responsive support and rich documentation. AWS Lake Formation also emphasizes Public Cloud deployment, focusing on integration within AWS. It provides effective governance, but users suggest enhancing support availability and speed.

Pricing and ROI: Snowflake employs a pay-as-you-go pricing model that users find complex for estimation, with mixed reactions on licensing terms. Nonetheless, its ROI is marked positively for operational efficiency. AWS Lake Formation’s pricing is tied to AWS ecosystem complexity, but it effectively delivers ROI, particularly in data governance and compliance.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake

December 2025

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Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

AWS Lake Formation

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 AWS Lake Formation is 5.0%, up from 5.0% 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%
AWS Lake Formation	5.0%
Other	78.9%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra

Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.

Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams

In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of AWS Lake Formation were the access model itself, as it allows implementation of filters, Blueprints, and row-level and column-level security to mask data that shouldn't be accessed by certain entities, enabling granular control without exposing PII data."

"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."

"The features and capabilities of AWS Lake Formation that I have found most valuable are that it is really convenient to see all the different data assets that were configured and understand who has and what type of service has or does not have access to those services."

"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."

"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."

"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."

"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."

"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"My company wanted to have all our data in one single place and this what we use Snowflake for. Snowflake also allows us to build connectors to different data sources."

"Its performance is a big advantage. When you run a query, its performance is very good. The inbound and outbound share features are also very useful for sharing a particular database. By using these features, you can allow others to access the Snowflake database and query it, which is another advantage of this solution. It has good security, and we can easily integrate it. We can connect it with multiple source systems."

"Snowflake is a great solution if you have substantial data volume."

"The speed of data loading and being able to quickly create the environment are most valuable."

"It is quite easy to manage."

"The ability to share the data and the ability to scale up and down easily are the most valuable features. The concept of data sharing and data plumbing made it very easy to provide and share data. The ability to refresh your Dev or QA just by doing a clone is also valuable. It has the dynamic scale up and scale down feature. Development and deployment are much easier as compared to other platforms where you have to go through a lot of stuff. With a tool like DBT, you can do modeling and transformation within a single tool and deploy to Snowflake. It provides continuous deployment and continuous integration abilities. There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only get charged for your usage. You only pay for what you use. When we share the data downstream with business partners, we can specifically create compute for them, and we can charge back the business."

"Its speed and performance were the most valuable. Easy configuration of Snowflake in any cloud was also a benefit."

"The technical support is pretty good, particularly if you are a more technical user."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."

"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."

"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."

"You need to have data experience to use the product."

"The initial onboarding process is challenging because creating a plan takes a month to a month and a half to build out."

"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."

"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

"The cost efficiency and monitoring of this solution could be improved. It's easy to spend a lot on Snowflake and it does offer monitoring tools but they're pretty basic."

"They have a new console, but I couldn't figure out anything in the new console. So, if I shift to the old console, I can figure out where to create the database schema and other things, but I have no idea where to go in the new console. That's one thing they can improve. I don't know why they created a new console to confuse. The old, classic console is much better."

"Snowflake needs transparency over costs and pricing."

"The pricing of the solution should be much easier to calculate or find by yourself."

"It would be helpful if Snowflake could create good reports instead of using Power BI reports."

"The data sharing capabilities across business units within the organization should be better."

"I would like to see more transparency in data processing, ATLs, and compute areas - which should give more comfort to the end users."

"Room for improvement would be writebacks. It doesn't support extensively writing back to the database, and it doesn't support web applications effectively. Ultimately, it's a database call, so if we are building web applications using Snowflake, it isn't that effective because there is some turnaround time from the database."

More Snowflake cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"There is a licensing for this solution and we purchased an enterprise license. Overall the solution is cost-effective."

"It is pay-as-you-go. Its cost is in the medium range."

"Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft."

"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."

"Snowflake goes by credits. For a financial institution where you have 5,000 employees, monthly costs may run up to maybe $5,000 to $6,000. This is actually based on the usage. It is mostly the compute cost. Your computing cost is the variable that is actually based on your usage. It is pay-per-use. In a pay-per-use case, you won't be spending more than $6,000 to $7,000 a month. It is not more than that for a small or medium enterprise, and it may come down to $100K per year. Storage is very standard, which is $23 a terabyte. It is not much for any enterprise. If you have even 20 terabytes, you are not spending more than $400 per month, which may turn out to be $2,000 to $3,000 per annum."

"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."

"We use Snowflake pretty heavily. We pay a significant amount of money for the tool. I'd say we pay $300k to $400K every year."

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	15

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 AWS Lake Formation?

I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...

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What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?

Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...

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What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?

My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...

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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

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 15% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 15% of the time

BigQuery vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon EMR vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 8% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation 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

Databricks vs Snowflake

Compared 3% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

January 2026

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

January 2026

Download Snowflake product report

Also Known As

No data available

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

AWS Lake Formation is a service that makes it easy to set up a secure data lake in days. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis.

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

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake

December 2025

Free Report: AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake

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