IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Snowflake comparison

IBM and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Data Warehouse category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 3.4% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 10.1% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Read 12 IBM Db2 Warehouse reviews

1,588 Views
1,239 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 104 Snowflake reviews

9,139 Views
3,564 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Snowflake

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

IBM Db2 Warehouse and Snowflake compete in the data management category. Snowflake has an advantage in features with more flexibility and cost justification, while IBM Db2 stands out with its strong support and extensive history.

Features: IBM Db2 Warehouse provides reliable analytics, strong security measures, and robust transaction processing. Snowflake's strengths include elasticity, seamless scalability, and support for diverse data types, making it capable of handling large-scale data solutions effectively.

Room for Improvement: IBM Db2 could improve its deployment complexity and initial setup costs. Enhancements in flexibility and cloud-native features could also be beneficial. Snowflake might work on enriching its integration depth with certain enterprise systems, optimizing its customer education resources, and further boosting its transaction handling capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Snowflake features a cloud-native architecture simplifying deployment with minimal on-premise infrastructure needs. It is noted for responsive customer service. IBM Db2, while offering a more complex deployment, delivers extensive support and tailored services fitting enterprise requirements.

Pricing and ROI: Snowflake's pricing model, based on consumption, often leads to a favorable ROI and is considered flexible. IBM Db2 Warehouse, with higher initial setup costs, potentially delivers strong long-term ROI through its comprehensive services, particularly benefiting large enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

January 2026

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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:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Ranking in Data Warehouse

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Snowflake

Ranking in Data Warehouse

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

104

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (2nd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (7th), AI Software Development (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 3.4%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 10.1%, down from 14.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Snowflake	10.1%
IBM Db2 Warehouse	3.4%
Other	86.5%

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Sherpard Muzuva

Senior Technical Manager- IBM Enterprise Systems at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)

Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance

While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

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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

"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."

"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."

"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."

"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."

"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse pros

"This solution has helped our organization by being easy to maintain and having good technical support."

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

"I have found the solution's most valuable features to be storage, flexibility, ease of use, and security."

"The solution is stable."

"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."

"The initial setup is straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation."

"It is a very good platform. It can handle structured and semi-structured data, and it can be used for your data warehouse or data lake. It can load and deal with any data that you have. It can extract data from an on-premises database or a website and make it available in the cloud. It has very fast implementation and integration as compared to other solutions. There is no need for the DBA to manage or do the day-to-day DBA tasks, which is one of the greatest things about it."

"Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."

"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."

"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."

"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."

"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."

"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

"In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data."

"We would like to see more security including more masking and more encryption at the database level."

"The cost is a bit high."

"Availability is a problem."

"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."

"The aspect of it that was more complicated was stored procedures. It does not support SQL language-based stored procedures. You have to write in JavaScript. If they supported SQL language and stored procedures, it would make migration from on-prem much simpler. In most cases, if an on-prem solution has stored procedures, they're usually written in SQL. They're not written as what most on-prem DBMS would refer to as an external stored procedure, which is what these feel like to most people because they're written in a language outside of SQL."

"Some SQL language functions could be included."

"There are some stored procedures that we've had trouble with. The solution also needs to fine-tune the connectors to be able to connect into the system source."

More Snowflake cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."

"It's expensive."

"We're based on credits. So, we're paying four and a half dollars of credit. There are no additional costs. I would rate it a two out of five in terms of pricing."

"The pricing part is based on the computing and storage. The costs are different and then there are services costs as well."

"It is hard to say because we're usually engaged in the transition as opposed to the long term. Their storage costs are easily within pennies of what AWS S3 would normally cost. Most of the clients I've been working with are in the financial sector, and they're relatively small. I would put them in an SMB connection. The first thing we have to bring up for people is that they're going to build this. They shouldn't store their data in S3. They should pipeline directly into Snowflake and use it on their storage. So, the cost is a big issue because these are small to medium size companies, and that is the biggest thing we had to price point for them."

"The solution is expensive."

"We used Snowflake to see if it is cheaper than using BigQuery. It was just to maintain the cost or the KPI regarding the cost of connectivity by users. Snowflake wasn't cheaper than BigQuery, and its affordability was the main issue."

"The price of Snowflake is very reasonable."

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

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

Government

University

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	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	5

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 IBM Db2 Warehouse?

The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.

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What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?

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What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?

The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...

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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

Amazon Redshift vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 13% of the time

BigQuery vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 8% of the time

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 7% of the time

Magnitude vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 7% of the time

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Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Dremio vs Snowflake

Compared 5% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

January 2026

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Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

InfoSphere Warehouse is a suite of products that combines the strength of DB2 with a data warehousing infrastructure from IBM. You can use InfoSphere Warehouse to build a complete data warehousing solution that includes a highly scalable relational database, data access capabilities, and front-end analysis tools.

IBM

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

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

January 2026

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