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Databricks vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 26, 2025

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
6.4
Users experience mixed returns with Databricks, noting cost efficiency and scalability but facing challenges with measuring monetary gains.
Sentiment score
6.2
Users find Snowflake challenging for ROI calculation, but it offers productivity gains, cost reduction, and valuable insights.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
Head CEO at bizmetric
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Databricks customer service is praised for prompt, professional support, though some report delays; documentation helps many users.
Sentiment score
5.7
Snowflake customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though improvements in timeliness and service-level agreements are suggested.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
I rate the technical support as fine because they have levels of technical support available, especially partners who get really good support from Databricks on new features.
Data Engineer at CRAFT Tech
I received great support in migrating data to Snowflake, with quick responses and innovative solutions.
Technology Leader at eTCaaS
I am satisfied with the work of technical support from Snowflake; they are responsive and helpful.
Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong
The technical support from Snowflake is very good, nice, and efficient.
Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for its scalability, elasticity, and auto-scaling, providing high performance and flexibility across industries.
Sentiment score
7.7
Snowflake offers seamless, flexible scalability for storage and computing, supporting diverse business needs with automatic cloud-based infrastructure scaling.
The sky's the limit with Databricks.
Governance And Engagement Lead
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
Snowflake is very scalable and has a dedicated team constantly improving the product.
Technology Leader at eTCaaS
The billing doubles with size increase, but processing does not necessarily speed up accordingly.
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.
Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Databricks is highly rated for reliability and efficiency, with minor issues quickly resolved, boasting strong user stability scores.
Sentiment score
8.2
Snowflake offers reliable, fast performance and high stability, with users praising its dependability and minimal disruptions.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Snowflake is very stable, especially when used with AWS.
Technology Leader at eTCaaS
Snowflake as a SaaS offering means that maintenance isn't an issue for me.
Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks needs better visualization, integration, clearer errors, UI enhancements, wider platform support, and improved documentation and usability.
Snowflake needs better UI, analytics, integration, documentation, governance, AI features, and cost management solutions to address user concerns.
Adjusting features like worker nodes and node utilization during cluster creation could mitigate these failures.
Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly.
Senior Data Engineer at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
Solution Architect at Mercedes-Benz AG
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.
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.
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.
Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Setup Cost

Databricks' pricing varies widely based on usage and data volume, making it cost-effective yet potentially expensive for large-scale use.
Snowflake's pricing model offers affordability and flexibility but challenges with cost predictability and potential high processing fees.
It is not a cheap solution.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
I believe that in terms of credits for Databricks, we're spending between £15,000 and £20,000 a month.
Governance And Engagement Lead
Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side.
Technology Leader at eTCaaS
Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating resource usage.
Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Databricks excels in ease of use, scalability, integration, and data governance, enhancing productivity and collaboration for data engineering.
Snowflake is scalable and flexible with features like zero-copy cloning, time travel, and integrated security, enhancing efficiency and accessibility.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
Data Platform Architect at KELLANOVA
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
Data Engineer at CRAFT Tech
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.
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.
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.
Technology Leader at eTCaaS
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
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 Databricks is 9.2%, up from 6.7% 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
ProductMarket Share (%)
Snowflake16.1%
Databricks9.2%
Other74.7%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
SunilPatil1 - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
What do you like most about Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
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 ...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.