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 7.8, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 2.6% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 14.0% 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

1,238 Views
879 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 101 Snowflake reviews

10,613 Views
3,715 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Snowflake

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

IBM Db2 Warehouse and Snowflake are both top players in the cloud data warehousing space. Snowflake appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced scalability and flexibility, making it suitable for rapidly growing data needs.

Features: IBM Db2 Warehouse offers strong integration within IBM's suite, efficient data storage, and robust security features. Snowflake provides dynamic scaling, seamless data sharing abilities, and support for both structured and semi-structured data.

Room for Improvement: IBM Db2 Warehouse could improve in terms of scalability and the complexity of its setup. It also requires a significant upfront investment. Snowflake might enhance its support for enterprise-level connectivity and increase its focus on integrated security features. Additionally, Snowflake could improve its cost predictability for users not familiar with consumption-based pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Db2 Warehouse offers a more structured deployment model, benefiting from IBM's comprehensive support. In contrast, Snowflake provides a streamlined, cloud-native deployment process, allowing quicker setup and simpler operations.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Db2 Warehouse generally involves higher upfront licensing and integration costs, possibly leading to longer ROI periods. Snowflake's pay-as-you-go pricing model offers better flexibility, providing potentially quicker returns on investment with its scalable resources.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

August 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,295 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

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

7.0

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.6%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 14.0%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

Read full review

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

"The solution is stable."

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

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

"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."

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

"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

"The ETL and data ingestion capabilities are better in this solution as compared to SQL Server. SQL Server doesn't do much data ingestion, but Snowflake can do it quite conveniently."

"The solution speeds up the process of onboarding."

"The most efficient way for real-time dashboards or analytical business intelligence reports to be sent to the customer."

"The product's most important feature is unloading data to S3."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"I like the idea that you can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data."

"It's ultra-fast at handling queries, which is what we find very convenient."

"The feature that is really striking is the ability to translate the SQL workloads into the NoSQL version that can be used by Snowflake."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

"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."

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."

"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."

"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."

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

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

"The solution should offer an on-premises version also. We have some requirements where we would prefer to use it as a template."

"The user interface continues to be an issue, especially when we need to get data out of Snowflake. It's very easy to get data in, but it's not too easy to get it out or extract it."

"The complexity of the initial setup of Snowflake depends on the use case. However, Snowflake itself, we don't set it up. The difficulty comes from the ingestion patterns, depending on what data I'm putting in, what kind of enrichment, and what additional value we have to add. However, it does tend to get complex because we have a lot of semi-structured data which we need to handle in Snowflake. There have been some challenges."

"There are some challenges with loading unstructured data and integrating some message queues or brokers. In one project, we had a problem connecting to one of the message queues and we had to take a different route altogether on Microsoft Azure."

"The UI could improve because sometimes in the security query the UI freezes. We then have to close the window and restart."

"Snowflake has support for stored procedures, but it is not that powerful."

"The solution could improve the user interface and add functionality to the system."

"From an improvement perspective, Snowflake can evolve in terms of writing costly, expensive queries with less cost and try to see if pipeline development can be made a little easier."

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."

"Users have to pay a licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."

"The pricing is economical as compared to traditional solutions like Oracle and competitive pricing."

"You pay based on the data that you are storing in the data warehouse and there are no maintenance costs."

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

"Snowflake is expensive, but when I consider what we get for that price, it's fair. I rate the solution three out of five for affordability, right in the middle."

"The price for the solution's license depends on the use cases."

"I believe that pricing is reasonable for this solution."

"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."

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?

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

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?

See all answers

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?

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 22% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 18% of the time

Magnitude vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Db2 Warehouse Competitors

Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 13% of the time

Dremio vs Snowflake

Compared 8% of the time

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse

August 2025

Download IBM Db2 Warehouse product report

Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

July 2025

Download Snowflake product report

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

August 2025

Free Report: IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake report.

See our list of best Data Warehouse vendors and best Cloud Data Warehouse vendors.

We monitor all Data Warehouse reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.