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Apache Hadoop vs Snowflake Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
5.4
Apache Hadoop provides cost-effective data storage and processing, though ROI varies based on analytics use and sophistication.
Sentiment score
5.7
Snowflake Analytics offers potential 40-50% performance benefits and cost savings, though financial returns vary based on user needs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Customer service varies by Hadoop distributor, with Hortonworks rated highly; support depends on vendor, community resources, or external vendors.
Sentiment score
7.2
Snowflake Analytics receives praise for responsive support, though some suggest improvements in complex issue resolution and occasional delay handling.
It's not structured support, which is why we don't use purely open-source projects without additional structured support.
Recently we had a two-day session where the Snowflake Analytics team provided a demo on Cortex AI and its features.
The Snowflake Analytics documentation is excellent.
The technical support for Snowflake Analytics is excellent based on what I have heard from others.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Apache Hadoop excels in scalability, allowing easy cluster expansion and efficient data handling, ideal for varied organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.8
Snowflake Analytics efficiently manages large data volumes with dynamic cloud scaling, offering superior scalability and cost efficiency versus competitors.
It is a distributed file system and scales reasonably well as long as it is given sufficient resources.
It supports both horizontal and vertical scaling effectively.
Maintaining security and data governance becomes easier with an entire data lake in place, and the scalability improves performance.
Storage is unlimited because they use S3 if it is AWS, so storage has no limit.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Apache Hadoop's stability, rated 8/10, improves with newer versions, though minor issues exist with memory and data processing.
Sentiment score
8.4
Snowflake Analytics is highly rated for its stable and reliable performance, ensuring minimal disruptions and high availability.
Continuous management in the way of upgrades and technical management is necessary to ensure that it remains effective.
Snowflake Analytics has been stable and reliable in my experience.
The Power BI team raised tickets for both Power BI and Snowflake Analytics, and their responses were very good.
Snowflake Analytics is stable, scoring around eight point five to nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Apache Hadoop needs improved usability, integration, security, support, and performance for efficient high-volume data processing and better community resources.
Snowflake Analytics requires enhancements in ML, cloud, legacy integration, cost transparency, user experience, and performance with large datasets.
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it.
I would prefer Snowflake Analytics to improve their support response times, as sometimes the responses we receive are not very prompt and ticket assignments may not be timely.
AIML-based SQL prompt and query generation could be an area for enhancement.
If it offered flexibility similar to Oracle and supported more heterogeneous data sources and database connectivity, it would be even better.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise Hadoop offers cost benefits but varies with deployment type and distribution, impacting smaller organizations more heavily.
Snowflake Analytics offers flexible usage-based pricing impacting cost, with views varying on expense and competitive pay-as-you-go benefits.
Snowflake charges per query, which amounts to a very minor cost, such as $0.015 per query.
Snowflake Analytics is quite economical.
Snowflake is better and cheaper than Redshift and other cloud warehousing systems.
 

Valuable Features

Apache Hadoop excels with a scalable, cost-effective system handling diverse data types, integrating with tools, and supporting big data analytics.
Snowflake Analytics provides efficient, secure, and scalable data management, supporting seamless integration and cost-effective analytics with advanced features.
I assess Apache Hadoop's fault tolerance during hardware failures positively since we have hardware failover, which works without problems.
Hadoop is a distributed file system, and it scales reasonably well provided you give it sufficient resources.
Snowflake Analytics supports data security with a single sign-on feature and complies with framework regulations, which is highly beneficial.
Running a considerable query on Microsoft SQL Server may take up to thirty minutes or an hour, while Snowflake executes the same query in less than three minutes.
The end-to-end encryption provided by Snowflake Analytics is very important because, in my previous firm, working in finance and investment management, data encryption is necessary due to the sensitive nature of customer data and the involvement of people's money.
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Hadoop
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (6th)
Snowflake Analytics
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (2nd), Cloud Data Warehouse (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sushil Arya - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides ease of integration with the IT workflow of a business
When working with Kafka, I saw that the data came in an incremental order. The incremental data processing part is still not very effective in Apache Hadoop. If the data is already there, it can be processed very effectively, especially if the data is coming in every second. If you want to know the location of some data every second, then such data is not processed effectively in Apache Hadoop. I can say that one of the features where improvements are required revolves around the licensing cost of the tool. If the tool can build some licensing structures in a pay-per-use manner, organizations can get the look and feel of Apache Hadoop. Apache Hadoop can offer a licensing structure of the product that can be seen as similar to how AWS operates. Apache Hadoop can look into the capability of processing incremental data. The tool's setup process can be a scope of improvement. Also, it is not very simple because while doing the setup, we need to do all the server settings, including port listing and firewall configurations. If we look at other products on the market, then they can be made simpler. There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the product's technical support part, making it an area where improvements are required. The time frame for the resolution is an area that needs to be improved. The overall communication part of the technical support team also needs improvement.
Garima Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Have created secure cloud-based data lakes and improved real-time data processing using integrated AI features
There are many capabilities which Snowflake Analytics offers that I find valuable, such as the storage and compute engine that allows working with any cloud system such as AWS or Azure, alongside its efficiencies in storage computation and cost-effectiveness, which saves money compared to on-premise systems. We also have features such as pre-cached results, Time Travel, and fail-safe, which are very useful for restoring data if deleted accidentally, and the streams and data pipes that facilitate real-time ingestion are great features as well. Snowflake Analytics offers multiple new connectors, allowing me to connect it with Kafka, and with Snowpark, I can work with any programming language such as Python, Java, or Scala for data processing and analysis. The data sharing feature offered by Snowflake Analytics is good because it allows sharing specific sets of data to end customers or users from different Snowflake Analytics accounts without exposing the entire dataset for data security reasons. Snowflake Analytics' support for machine learning models and real-time insights has enhanced significantly. Originally, it wasn't strong in AI/ML, but now it has multiple models and forecasting capabilities, providing good competition to tools such as Databricks and Spark. In BI, I have worked majorly with Microsoft Power BI, and the integration with Snowflake Analytics is very easy. The way we integrate Snowflake Analytics with other on-premise systems just requires the warehouse details, username, passwords, and the account name, along with multiple options such as client ID and credentials for logging in and creating a session. The end-to-end encryption provided by Snowflake Analytics is very important because, in my previous firm, working in finance and investment management, data encryption is necessary due to the sensitive nature of customer data and the involvement of people's money. It's crucial to have encryption in transit and at rest, along with data masking features which Snowflake Analytics offers.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
5%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Hadoop?
It's primarily open source. You can handle huge data volumes and create your own views, workflows, and tables. I can also use it for real-time data streaming.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Hadoop?
The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level. While it might be free for students, organizations typically need to pay for their subscriptions. Th...
What needs improvement with Apache Hadoop?
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it. This wa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake Analytics?
Snowflake Analytics is quite economical. It does not appear to incur significant extra expenses beyond the solution's initial cost. However, a complete pricing analysis is still in progress.
What needs improvement with Snowflake Analytics?
There are some minor issues encountered with Snowflake Analytics, such as problems when working with identity or row number generating different results or issues with referential integrity, which ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Adobe, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hulu, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, AOL, Twitter, University of Maryland, Yahoo!, Cornell University Web Lab
Lionsgate, Adobe, Sony, Capital One, Akamai, Deliveroo, Snagajob, Logitech, University of Notre Dame, Runkeeper
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Hadoop vs. Snowflake Analytics and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.