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Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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
7.0
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides cost savings and efficiency with serverless options, achieving up to 70% ROI in years.
Sentiment score
6.8
Snowflake users experience mixed ROI; challenges in calculation exist, but long-term benefits include cost reduction and improved data management.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics support varies, with larger clients benefiting more, while smaller clients face slower, less expert assistance.
Sentiment score
7.3
Snowflake's customer service is praised for expertise and helpfulness, though some note delays and lack of SLAs.
Not monitoring data results often in a big impact on customer services and customer perception.
They are slow to respond and not very knowledgeable.
I received great support in migrating data to Snowflake, with quick responses and innovative solutions.
The technical support from Snowflake is very good, nice, and efficient.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers scalable solutions with serverless architecture, appreciated for flexibility and adaptability despite potential costs.
Sentiment score
7.8
Snowflake is praised for scalability and efficiency, but concerns exist regarding cost-effectiveness in medium to large-scale organizations.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is scalable, offering numerous opportunities for scalability.
For the scalability of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, I would rate it a 10 until you remain in the Azure Cloud scalability framework.
The billing doubles with size increase, but processing does not necessarily speed up accordingly.
Snowflake is very scalable and has a dedicated team constantly improving the product.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is reliable and efficient, with high user satisfaction despite occasional issues with large datasets.
Sentiment score
8.2
Snowflake is praised for stability and reliability, with users noting excellent performance, quick issue resolution, and robust architecture.
I find the service stable as I have not encountered many issues.
Snowflake as a SaaS offering means that maintenance isn't an issue for me.
Snowflake is very stable, especially when used with AWS.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics users seek better integration, performance, simpler interfaces, affordability, and expanded support for IoT and machine learning.
Snowflake users seek improved UI, pricing transparency, analytics, integrations, AI features, and enhanced support, ETL, and machine learning capabilities.
There is a need for better documentation, particularly for customized tasks with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics.
Databricks is a very rich solution, with numerous open sources and capabilities in terms of extract, transform, load, database query, and so forth.
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.
Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Synapse Analytics is costly yet appreciated for Microsoft integration, requiring careful cost management due to variable pricing.
Snowflake's pricing offers flexibility but can be unpredictable and expensive compared to Redshift or BigQuery, with room for transparency improvements.
When you scale the solution, the cloud doesn't work anymore in terms of cost.
Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side.
Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating resource usage.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics provides scalable, secure data processing with seamless integration, user-friendly operations, and Power BI compatibility.
Snowflake excels in scalable, secure data processing with fast queries, multi-format support, and seamless third-party integration for AI/ML.
For Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, the integration is the most valuable feature, meaning that whatever you need is fast and easy to use.
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics offers significant visibility, which helps us understand our usage more clearly.
One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations.
Being able to perform AI and Machine Learning in the same location as the data is quite advantageous.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure Synapse Ana...
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics is 6.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 19.6%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Renee Hoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalable performance tuning and optimization for finance and supply chain jobs
We run our finance and supply chain jobs using SQL BW, and we visualize our data loads on Power BI. We are using SQL Data Warehouse for data warehousing In terms of cost savings, we don't need specialization in skills as advanced as Teradata. We used to pay extensive licensing fees for Teradata,…
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
51%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
5%
Educational Organization
33%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
The product is easy to use, and anybody can easily migrate to advanced DB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
We use an enterprise-level subscription for Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. I would rate our satisfaction with the price around five, as I have not focused much on cost aspects presently.
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?
There is a need for a tool to help me estimate the cost of using Snowflake. Enhancements in user experience for data observability and quality checks would be beneficial, as these tasks currently r...
 

Also Known As

Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft Azure SQL DW, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MS Azure Synapse Analytics
Snowflake Computing
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Toshiba, Carnival, LG Electronics, Jet.com, Adobe, 
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.