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Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs Snowflake comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

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

Microsoft Analytics Platfor...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
18th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
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
108
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th), AI Software Development (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Analytics Platform System is 2.4%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 8.8%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake8.8%
Microsoft Analytics Platform System2.4%
Other88.8%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

MahmoudMohamed1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at Tatweer Educational Technologies Company - TETCO
Offers smooth data integration between systems, but requires better real-time analytics capabilities
We leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services. This lets us continue using private databases without paying additional licensing fees. Additionally, the license includes Analytics services and Power BI, which work on-premises, unlike most other technologies that require cloud solutions.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Cube Solution is quite different when compared to the rest of the competition and has unique functionality for advanced analytics."
"It is closely integrated with other products in the MS portfolio."
"The most valuable part of the product is that it is a system, with different tools for different services for different kinds of scenarios, making it a very rich, integrated, technology-rich platform whose total integration with the rest of Microsoft products creates flexibility and compatibility and makes the tool a very useful one."
"By combining both Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and unstructured Hadoop analytical capabilities in a single, easy-to-manage EDW appliance, Microsoft APS is well positioned to help organizations use information to enhance their competitive position."
"This is a well-integrated solution and that integration empowers results."
"We help customers in many ways from customized analysis for detection of anomalies in tax, operations, customer relationship, and marketing campaigns, and we also use mining and ML to help them discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"This solution will connect to any database, you can combine databases, and you can create a cube or tabular model."
"Snowflake is user-friendly and reliable in creating the data warehouse and carrying out data modeling."
"I'd definitely recommend the product."
"The syntax is advanced which reduces the time to write code."
"Snowflake's most valuable features are data enrichment and flattening."
"The most valuable feature is the clone copy."
"We've been mostly very happy with its capabilities."
"The tool's performance is good. I think it's the best in the game right now. It usually charges per query. For example, if you run a SQL query on Snowflake with the same number of data records, it would take less than half the time compared to running it on Microsoft. It has good documentation. You can pick up Snowflake if you have previous knowledge of SQL."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"In general, I am not really very satisfied with the tutorials that are out there."
"The flexibility of this solution needs to be improved because you cannot make changes at every one of the different steps."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System could have better support."
"​Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"Functionality needs to be more up-to-date with competing products."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"I think the biggest problem with the product is that it does a data ingest model, which is very expensive."
"It needs a bit more rigor and governance, which is something you don't get with newer tools. This makes it less enterprise scalable. Its governance and structure can be enhanced, which would really be valuable. I would like to see some kind of prebuilt functionality in terms of having almost like a pre-built data warehouse. A functionality for generating automated kind of pieces would be good."
"I see room for improvement when it comes to credit performance. The other thing I'd like to be improved is the warehouse facility."
"Snowflake is expensive, but when I consider what we get for that price, it's fair."
"The solution needs more connectors."
"The pricing of the solution should be much easier to calculate or find by yourself."
"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."
"This solution could be improved by offering machine learning apps."
"It would benefit from an administration that allows you to be aware of your credit consumption once you have the service so that you may be sure how many credits you are consuming when you use the platform and to make sure that you are making the most efficient use of these resources. In other words, to improve their interface so that you may monitor the consumption of your credits on Cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"We are currently paying $200,000 a year for all the different parts of the suite during an ingest model Microsoft now charges us $700,000 a year."
"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
"It's expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Users have to pay a licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."
"Oracle is less expensive than Snowflake."
"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of queries you want on your database. The cost is small. To get the tool's pricing, you can do the math based on the cost per query, which is $0.002. If you're running your queries frequently, your charges will be higher than running fewer queries."
"I have worked with multiple clouds, and cost-wise, it is a bit costlier than others, such as Redshift. Its price should be reduced."
"The pricing for Snowflake is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
We find the metering and billing experience for Snowflake to be expensive because there are many limitations to what it can do. When we compared performance-wise and cost-wise to Bedrock for some o...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Lessons learned about our main use case or how Snowflake performed in those areas include that the sales representatives do not really understand the product, and that the solutions consultants bas...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake?
Our main use case for Snowflake was to ingest data, use it for search, analytics, and data sharing with our customers; however, in reality, those use cases did not work. When it came to our challen...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft APS, MS Analytics Platform System
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Transport for London, E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG, Prometeia, Tangerine, SSM Health Care, Service Corporation International
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.