Snowflake’s pricing model is based on usage and can be summarized as follows:

Pricing Model

Snowflake uses a usage-based pricing model that tracks consumption across computation, data storage, and data transfer.

Compute Costs

• Compute costs are billed in the form of credits, which can be purchased upfront or billed monthly.
• Costs are based on the number of virtual warehouses used, their size, and the duration of their operation.
• The cost of each credit varies by Snowflake edition, hosting location, and cloud provider.

Storage Costs

• Storage is priced directly in dollars per terabyte per month.
• Prices vary by cloud provider and region; for example, $23 per TB per month in AWS USA regions, with higher costs in other regions.

Data Transfer Costs

• Data ingress (moving data into Snowflake) is free.
• Data egress (moving data out of Snowflake) incurs costs, but not for retrieving query results or transferring data within the same region and cloud provider.

Pricing Plans

• On Demand Pricing: Charged a fixed rate for consumption and storage, billed monthly in arrears. This is a self-serve model and is the easiest way to get started.
• Capacity Pricing: Involves purchasing credits upfront, often with discounts for capacity commitments and longer contract lengths.

Snowflake Editions

• Standard: Basic features.
• Enterprise: Includes multi-cluster warehouses (horizontal scaling).
• Business Critical: Focuses on increased security and data protection.
• Virtual Private Snowflake (VPS): Enhanced security and data protection.

Regions

• Snowflake has over 35 regions to choose from, and customers can create multiple accounts across different cloud providers and regions.

Here is a summary in a paragraph format:

Snowflake’s pricing is usage-based, charging for computation, storage, and data transfer. Compute costs are billed in credits, varying by edition, location, and cloud provider. Storage costs are direct dollar amounts per terabyte per month, differing by region. Data ingress is free, while egress incurs costs except for query results and same-region transfers. Snowflake offers On Demand and Capacity Pricing plans, with four editions (Standard, Enterprise, Business Critical, VPS) and over 35 regions to choose from. Discounts are available for capacity commitments and longer contracts.