Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Firebolt vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

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

Firebolt
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
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
101
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Firebolt is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 17.7%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Snowflake17.7%
Firebolt0.8%
Other81.5%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Iqbal Hossain Raju - PeerSpot reviewer
Can quickly query it to generate quick results
We have used Snowflake before. We support both. Firebolt has better performance, executing queries much quicker than Snowflake. However, Snowflake has more functionality. Depending on the client's needs, we can recommend the best option. Firebolt is a relatively new technology. Snowflake has many functionalities. Firebolt does not support unloading data to S3. There is no built-in way to do this in Firebolt. Alternatively, the data can be retrieved using API calls and loaded to S3 manually. Data can be unloaded to S3 directly using Snowflake. Firebolt significantly improves our performance over Snowflake because it takes less time to execute queries. This is especially important for our company because we use some KPIs that require fast loading times.
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Transformation in data querying speed with good migration capabilities
Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses. One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations. It also has tools for migrating data from legacy databases like Oracle. Its stability and efficiency enhance performance greatly. Tools in the AI/ML marketplace are readily available without needing development.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Firebolt is fast for analytical purposes. For example, we have analytical data in our data warehouse, and Firebolt can quickly query it to generate quick results."
"Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."
"The most valuable features are the clustering, LS50, being able to change the size, the pay per use feature, the flexibility with many different sources and analytic applications."
"The most valuable features of Snowflake are its performance and power."
"Data sharing is a good feature. It is a majorly used feature. The elastic compute is another big feature. Separating compute and storage gives you flexibility. It doesn't require much DBA involvement because it doesn't need any performance tuning. We are not really doing any performance tuning, and the entire burden of performance tuning and SQL tuning is on Snowflake. Its usability is very good. I don't need to ramp up any user, and its onboarding is easier. You just onboard the user, and you are done with it. There are simple SQL and UI, and people are able to use this solution easily. Ease of use is a big thing in Snowflake."
"They separate compute and storage. You can scale storage independently of the computer, or you can scale computing independently of storage. If you need to buy more computer parts you can add new virtual warehouses in Snowflake. Similarly, if you need more storage, you take more storage. It's most scalable in the database essentially; typically you don't have this scalability independence on-premises."
"The solution is easy to use."
"I have found the solution's most valuable features to be storage, flexibility, ease of use, and security."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"Firebolt's engine takes a long time to start because it needs to make engine calls."
"These aren't as crucial, but there are common errors sometimes where the database is down, or a table is nullified and a new table is added and you are not given access to that. With those errors, you don't have permissions."
"Snowflake needs to improve its programming part. Though the tool has Snowpath, it doesn’t support all features like its competitor, Databricks. Snowflake doesn’t support external data ingestion capabilities. You need to have third-party tools for that. Also, the tool needs to incorporate data integration features in its future releases."
"Support needs improvement, as it can take several days before you get some initial support."
"The UI could improve because sometimes in the security query the UI freezes. We then have to close the window and restart."
"The solution needs more connectors."
"Portability is a big hurdle right now for our clients. Porting all of your existing SQL ecosystem, such as stored procedures, to Snowflake is a major pain point. Currently, Snowflake stored procedures use JavaScript, but they should support SQL-based stored procedures. It would be a huge advantage if you can write your stored procedures using SQL. It seems that they are working on this feature, and they are yet to release it. I remember seeing some notes saying that they were going to do that in the future, but the sooner this feature comes out, it would be better for Snowflake because there are a lot of clients with whom I'm interacting, and their main hurdle is to take their existing Oracle or SQL Server stored procedures and move them into Snowflake. For this, you need to learn JavaScript and how it works, which is not easy and becomes a little tricky. If it supports SQL-based procedures, then you can just cut-paste the SQL code, run it, and easily fix small issues."
"I don't think that the AI tools in Snowflake are good."
"Snowflake has to build more capabilities because they have only built very few adapters, but they're growing and they're building. They should provide provisions to collect ETL pipeline capabilities, reduce developer work, and make more rapid application development, rather than some customizations. There are very few options, but they are building. I hope they will build ETL rapid application development provisions with more variety."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of Snowflake is very reasonable."
"Currently, we have a trial account, so we don't need a license. After our project starts, we would need a permanent license."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"Pricing can be confusing for customers."
"Snowflake is cost-effective. However, the cost can depend on how it's being used and how efficiently the code is written. If engineers don't write efficient code and usage is billed based on processing, it can become costly. If they write optimal code and choose the best solution, it can reduce costs in comparison to other options, such as Oracle."
"It is not cheap."
"The pricing part is based on the computing and storage. The costs are different and then there are services costs as well."
"Pricing is based on usage. It is the most expensive of our data tools."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Firebolt?
Firebolt is fast for analytical purposes. For example, we have analytical data in our data warehouse, and Firebolt can quickly query it to generate quick results.
What needs improvement with Firebolt?
Firebolt's engine takes a long time to start because it needs to make engine calls. Currently, the data size of Firebolt is small. It can be increased.
What advice do you have for others considering Firebolt?
One way to retrieve data from firewalls is to add query parameters to the connection string. For example, you can use the REST API to retrieve the security query. Some firewalls have been deployed ...
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?
Pricing is quite high for Snowflake Data Cloud, which is an area that could be improved. Snowflake Data Cloud is still beneficial to use, but only if you can afford it. It can be cost-effective if ...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.