Snowflake is a mature, fully managed cloud data platform with broader enterprise adoption and support, while Dremio is a lighter-weight, open-source alternative focused on self-service analytics and lower costs for organizations with data engineering expertise.
Snowflake vs Dremio — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Enterprise cloud data warehouse with native multi-cloud support and broad BI ecosystem integration.
Open-source data lakehouse platform enabling SQL queries on data lakes without ETL or data movement.
Architecture. Starting Price (Monthly). Enterprise Support & SLAs. Query Performance (TPC-DS 100GB). Market Share (2024). Setup Time. Data Format Support
Choose Snowflake if you need enterprise-grade reliability, minimal DevOps overhead, and 24/7 support for mission-critical analytics at scale—the cost premium ($150K-$500K+ annually) is justified for large enterprises. Choose Dremio if you have strong data engineering teams, want to minimize licensing costs, prefer open-source flexibility, or operate in cost-sensitive mid-market environments where self-managed infrastructure is acceptable.
Snowflake: Structured (Parquet, CSV, JSON) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Snowflake Marketplace (proprietary) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: $2-4 per credit | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 3 (AWS, Azure, GCP) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Limited by warehouse size | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 1,000+ datasets | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Limited by warehouse size, manual tuning | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: AWS, Azure, GCP | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Native, cross-account/cross-cloud | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Complete separation | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Available (instant, free) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 100,000 events/sec | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Consumption-based (compute + storage) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 3/10 (very easy) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 0.3-0.5 weeks (1-2 days) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Up to 50+ PB (cloud limits) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: SQL, Python, Java, JavaScript, Scala | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 1-2 years (SQL knowledge) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Yes (sub-second latency) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Unlimited | Dremio: 10,000+ (config-dependent)
Snowflake: 8 (Parquet, CSV, JSON, ORC, AVRO, XML, PDF, Images) | Dremio: 12 (+ Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi, Apache Arrow)
Snowflake: Cloud-only (SaaS) | Dremio: SaaS + self-hosted + Kubernetes + on-prem
Snowflake: Batch-based (bulk loading) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 95% (full ANSI) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: ~10,000 enterprises | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: $10,000-1,000,000 (credits-based) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 3-15 (depends on data size) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Unlimited (petabyte-scale) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 3/10 (managed cloud service) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Limited (external integration required) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Structured (optimized for tables/CSV/JSON) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Unlimited (multi-cluster shared warehouse) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 32% of cloud data warehouse market | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 2.8x baseline (external ML tools required) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 0.1 weeks (24 hours) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: $4.00-$6.00 (Medium warehouse) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: $23 (on-demand) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: ~1 (auto-scaling, no downtime) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 4-8 (clustering hints optional) | Dremio: N/A
Starting Monthly Cost (10GB active data)
SQL Query Performance (TPC-DS Benchmark)
Snowflake: Cortex AI (basic) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: High (proprietary format) | Dremio: N/A
Maximum Concurrent Queries Per Warehouse
Snowflake: 8-128 (warehouse-dependent) | Dremio: N/A
Annual TCO (100TB storage, average usage)
Snowflake: Independent scaling | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: None (on-demand only) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: ANSI SQL compliant | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 5 (account creation) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 1 (virtual warehouse) | Dremio: N/A
Query Performance (10TB TPC-DS benchmark)
Snowflake: Fully independent (separate pricing) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: ANSI SQL with advanced optimizations | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 90 days automatic | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Industry leading (100% baseline) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 5-10 minutes (serverless) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 4/10 (limited native, requires integrations) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: $2.00-$4.00 per credit | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 32% enterprise market share (2025) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Limited (structured tables primary) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Native (Secure Shares, production-ready) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 20-35 minutes (SQL based) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: 500-1000+ elastic | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Yes (zero-copy) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: Per-second (1 credit minimum per query) | Dremio: N/A
Snowflake: $4,000-8,000 | Dremio: $0 (open-source) or $15,000 (Enterprise)
Snowflake: $2-4 per credit (1 credit = compute + storage) | Dremio: Fixed subscription or pay-as-you-go based on usage
Snowflake: 100% (must ingest into Snowflake) | Dremio: 0% (in-place querying on S3/ADLS)
Snowflake: Slower without ingestion; 5-10x slower on unoptimized data lake queries | Dremio: 10-100x faster with Apache Arrow and columnar caching
Snowflake: 30+ (Tableau, Power BI, Looker, Qlik, Sisense) | Dremio: 3-5 via ODBC/JDBC (requires manual setup)
Snowflake: 99.9% | Dremio: Community: no SLA; Enterprise: 99.5%
Snowflake: 90 days retention | Dremio: Not a primary feature (data lake versioning via external tools)
Snowflake: No (requires data copy into Snowflake) | Dremio: Yes (primary design pattern)
Data Governance (Unity Catalog equivalent)
Snowflake: N/A | Dremio: Basic metadata catalog
How to choose between Snowflake and Dremio
Snowflake vs Dremio — Structured Comparison Data
Machine-readable comparison dataset for Snowflake vs Dremio. Contains 135 attribute comparisons, 5 FAQ pairs.
Snowflake vs Dremio — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Snowflake vs Dremio.
What's the biggest cost difference between Snowflake and Dremio?
For a 100TB data warehouse with 50 daily queries, Snowflake typically costs $240,000-$500,000 annually, while Dremio's managed service runs $80,000-$150,000. Dremio's open-source option reduces this to infrastructure costs only (~$30,000-$60,000 for AWS). The delta widens with query volume—Snowflake's per-credit pricing ($2-$4) becomes expensive for exploration-heavy workflows.
Which is better for real-time analytics?
Snowflake has faster query response times (8.2 seconds vs 11.5 seconds for 10TB scans) and automatic scaling for traffic spikes, making it superior for real-time dashboards. Dremio can match this with proper cluster tuning but requires more manual optimization. For sub-second latency requirements, neither is ideal—consider specialized real-time engines like ClickHouse or Apache Druid.
Can I switch from Snowflake to Dremio without rewriting queries?
Mostly yes—both support standard SQL (ANSI SQL-92 subset). However, Snowflake-specific features like dynamic SQL, variant data types, and specific functions require porting. Data sharing and time-travel cloning (Snowflake) have no direct Dremio equivalents. Plan 2-4 weeks for a mid-market migration including testing and optimization.
Which requires more ongoing maintenance?
Snowflake is fully managed—Snowflake handles infrastructure, patching, and scaling. Dremio's managed service eliminates this too, but self-hosted Dremio requires a dedicated DevOps team for cluster management, Kubernetes orchestration, and security patches. Plan 1-2 FTE annually for production Dremio support vs. minimal overhead for Snowflake.
Does Snowflake or Dremio work better with Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake?
Dremio has native, optimized support for Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Hudi with zero-copy reads. Snowflake added Iceberg support in 2024 but treats it as external data—querying is slower and requires additional configuration. For lakehouse architectures, Dremio is 25-40% faster on Iceberg scans based on benchmark testing.
How to Choose Between Snowflake and Dremio
Architecture: Snowflake has Fully managed SaaS on AWS/Azure/GCP, while Dremio has Hybrid: open-source engine + managed cloud option.
Starting Price (Monthly): Snowflake has $4,000-$8,000 USD minimum commitment, while Dremio has $0 (open-source) or $2,000-$5,000 (managed).
Enterprise Support & SLAs: Snowflake has 24/7 support with guaranteed 99.99% uptime SLA, while Dremio has Community-driven or paid enterprise support.
Consider: Query Performance (TPC-DS 100GB)
Query Performance (TPC-DS 100GB): Snowflake has ~45 seconds average, while Dremio has ~52 seconds average.
Market Share (2024): Snowflake has 31% of enterprise data platform market, while Dremio has 4% of enterprise data platform market.
Setup Time: Snowflake has 15-30 minutes for first warehouse, while Dremio has 2-4 hours for production deployment.
Data Format Support: Snowflake has Structured (Parquet, CSV, JSON), while Dremio has Structured + Apache Arrow optimization.