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AWS Snowball vs Palantir Foundry comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 2024

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 Snowball
Ranking in Data Migration Appliances
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (15th)
Palantir Foundry
Ranking in Data Migration Appliances
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Supply Chain Analytics (1st), Cloud Data Integration (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (1st), Data and Analytics Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Data Migration Appliances category, the mindshare of AWS Snowball is 34.8%, down from 37.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palantir Foundry is 6.0%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Migration Appliances Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Snowball34.8%
Palantir Foundry6.0%
Other59.2%
Data Migration Appliances
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin-Davis - PeerSpot reviewer
Global CTO AWS Business Group at Eviden
Seamless data transfer and efficient migration with customizable storage sizes
I like that I can take data and send it straight to S3 when it loads in. The interface for getting my data onto the Snowball is so streamlined. I don't know if you've ever seen it before. It's really cool. I connect them to the backplane of our existing network. I'm able to address it quickly and move the data quickly inside my customers' data centers. There's a little screen on it, which changes the UPS codes and all that stuff. The label and everything AWS electronic, so I don't have to deal with shipping issues. It makes it super simple and easy to use from end to end.
reviewer2846265 - PeerSpot reviewer
PALANTIR DATA ENGINEER at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Unified healthcare pipelines have improved data trust and accelerated operational decisions
One challenge regarding how Palantir Foundry can be improved is the learning curve. Foundry has a very broad ecosystem with Ontology, Pipeline Builder, Code Repositories, and AI integrations. For new engineers or business users onboarding, it can take time, especially if they are coming from more traditional data platforms. Better documentation, simplified onboarding paths, and more beginner-friendly examples would help accelerate adoption. Another area is debugging complexity. While lineage and monitoring are strong features, troubleshooting deeply interconnected pipelines can still become difficult in a large enterprise environment. Sometimes error logs and pipeline failure messages could be more descriptive or developer-friendly, especially for distributed PySpark jobs. Another pain point is customization limitations in certain UI-driven components. While low-code tools are great for rapid development, highly customized workflows sometimes still require engineering workarounds or deeper technical implementation. The platform is extremely capable, but improvements around usability, debugging experience, DevOps flexibility, and ecosystem openness would make it even more effective for enterprise engineering teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features I like best are the tool's high capacity, scalability, end-to-end encryption for data security, ease of use, durability, and cost-effectiveness. It's particularly cost-effective for transferring large amounts of data compared to high-speed internet transfers."
"It's a nice way of shipping a lot of data without using a network."
"AWS offers managed services which save time and reduce administrative overhead."
"The most valuable features of AWS Snowball for me are its security measures and its flexibility."
"You are able to scale the solution vertically. It's very scalable."
"The support team's awesome, and they've always been very responsive."
"If you have a large amount of data, it's a perfect way to move it to the cloud."
"The way the data is moved is very clever. Also, the interface is very simple and user-friendly."
"Palantir Foundry's AI capabilities, governance, and security are top tier as it is a fully locked environment and is best for government organizations where data security is a major consideration."
"I like the data onboarding to Palantir Foundry and ETL creation."
"It has been the platform for end to end data processing, manipulations, and reporting, greatly improved org's data reporting effort."
"Palantir Foundry has positively impacted my organization by providing good support from Palantir teams, facilitating the development of many new solutions, building our UI and web applications, and significantly enhancing our productivity."
"The security is also excellent. It's highly granular, so the admins have a high degree of control, and there are many levels of security. That worked well. You won't have an EDC unless you put everything onto the platform because it is its own isolated thing."
"Foundry's data visualization is fantastic."
"Palantir Foundry has positively impacted my organization with over 200 projects completed efficiently and effectively, and they are very complex projects."
"Both time and money were saved since a project that would usually take six months was completed in two to three months."
 

Cons

"AWS support could be more responsive."
"If AWS Snowball is intercepted, there is a potential risk of unauthorized access to the data."
"It's not an easy product to start using for a beginner, but If you're a professional, it's easy to understand."
"The costs of services the customer needs also matter, such as storage requirements and whether storage is rational."
"24/7 support is more expensive on AWS compared to Azure."
"Snowball is not interesting and is a pain to deal with."
"It does have room for improvement. The ability to better ingest some of the big data."
"The stability of the solution isn't ideal and should be improved."
"The problem is that interaction with outside applications can be difficult with the current setup that Palantir Foundry has."
"Palantir Foundry needs more resources to understand and train new, incoming resources to understand the basic knowledge of the entire platform."
"Always having to work with a Palantir representative creates severe bottlenecks and increases costs, making it desirable for me as the end user to perform tasks without constant requests for support."
"The frontend capabilities of Palantir Foundry could be improved."
"I think much of the work within Palantir Foundry is still manual, so I might want to write certain automations or develop conversational interfaces rapidly."
"The solution could use more online documentation for new users."
"For example, exporting data from Palantir Foundry is very difficult and has many limitations."
"The data lineage was challenging. It's hard to track data from the sources as it moves through stages. Informatica EDC can easily capture and report it because it talks to the metadata. This is generated across those various staging points."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not a cheap solution, but the price is right for the product."
"The tool's pricing depends on the type of Snowball device you choose, the amount of data you need to transfer, and the service fees involved. There’s a standard price for larger data transfers and a flat job fee, which includes the first ten days of on-site usage. Typically, there are no additional data transfer fees."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"It's expensive."
"Palantir Foundry is an expensive solution."
"Palantir Foundry has different pricing models that can be negotiated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise51
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Microsoft Azure Data Box or AWS Snowball?
Microsoft Azure Databox is a 45-pound, super rugged, tamper-resistant, human-managed hardware appliance that can transfer up to 100TB of data capacity to copy, store, then send to the Azure cloud. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Snowball?
Depending of what is your priority; UseAWS Snowball if you are heavily invested in AWS or need edge computing features Choose Azure Data Box for smooth integration with Azure and potentially lower ...
What needs improvement with AWS Snowball?
It's difficult to make a comparison and it depends on the customer. When analyzing costs, I must see how the customer uses AWS, Azure, or Google. Google is particularly interesting, for example, fo...
What needs improvement with Palantir Foundry?
The Workshop application could be improved because it is not very customizable, but it is still very strong. We also have the React OSK apps, but it does not allow the inbuilt applications such as ...
What is your primary use case for Palantir Foundry?
My main use case for Palantir Foundry is to solve business problems, such as in healthcare. I also worked on a project for a law firm where thousands of PDFs were coming in, and we needed to check ...
What advice do you have for others considering Palantir Foundry?
I believe they should get started by completing all the free certificates, then they could apply to the paid certificates to get a master of Palantir Foundry, solve some real use cases, do examples...
 

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Snowball, Amazon Snowball, Snowball
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wazee Digital, Craftsy, Live Nation, Essess
Merck KGaA, Airbus, Ferrari,United States Intelligence Community, United States Department of Defense
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Snowball vs. Palantir Foundry and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.