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AWS Lake Formation 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

AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (3rd), AI Software Development (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 3.3%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 15.4%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake15.4%
AWS Lake Formation3.3%
Other81.3%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.
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

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"There is no doubt that this place exceeded my expectations with its incredible ambiance, attentive service, and mouthwatering menu."
"The main benefits that I have seen from using AWS Lake Formation are related to FinOps because you have control of your data and can track your costs since AWS Lake Formation is integrated into a unique platform, which is AWS Cloud Service."
"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"AWS Lake Formation has several valuable features that enhance data management, and one particularly beneficial aspect is how it facilitates better collaboration within data teams."
"The features and capabilities of AWS Lake Formation that I have found most valuable are that it is really convenient to see all the different data assets that were configured and understand who has and what type of service has or does not have access to those services."
"Every solution has its pros and cons, however, for our purposes, this solution works quite well for us."
"It is definitely a good tool and a good database without any adoption problems."
"It is a very good platform. It can handle structured and semi-structured data, and it can be used for your data warehouse or data lake. It can load and deal with any data that you have. It can extract data from an on-premises database or a website and make it available in the cloud. It has very fast implementation and integration as compared to other solutions. There is no need for the DBA to manage or do the day-to-day DBA tasks, which is one of the greatest things about it."
"It is a cloud solution with many useful features. It has the data science capability. It can transform data and prepare data for a data science project with scalability."
"Its performance is a big advantage, and when you run a query, its performance is very good."
"Snowflake is a modern version of Informatica which is 100 percent in the cloud."
"Snowflake is a database, and it is very good and useful. The most interesting part is that memory management is very good in Snowflake. For a business intelligence project, SQL Server is taking a lot of time for reporting services. There are a lot of calculations, and the reporting time is shown as two minutes, whereas Snowflake is taking just two seconds for the same reporting services."
"A user-friendly and reliable solution."
"The querying speed is fast."
 

Cons

"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."
"The UI of AWS Lake Formation is not very responsive."
"I would appreciate online support, which I don't have access to in my corporation at the bank, so that is important."
"There are areas that could be improved in AWS Lake Formation, and functionality that could be included in future releases."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"Rather than creating an additional hundred tools, optimizing a tool to have a centralized location to do governance would be beneficial."
"Athena can be a bit clunky when writing queries, indicating a potential enhancement point for easier user interaction with query tools such as DataGrip using provided driver JARs."
"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."
"Their strategy is just to leverage what you've got and put Snowflake in the middle. It does work well with other tools. You have to buy a separate reporting tool and a separate data loading tool, whereas, in some platforms, these tools are baked in. In the long-term, they'll need to add more direct partnerships to the ecosystem so that it's not like adding on tools around Snowflake to make it work. They can also consider including Snowflake native reporting tools versus partnering with other reporting tools. It would kind of change where they sit in the market."
"I would like to see a client version of the GUI."
"They don't have any SLAs in place. It would be better if they did."
"They need to incorporate some basic OLAP capabilities in the backend or at the database level."
"The addition of more AI capabilities in Snowflake would help us more."
"We've come to realize that for many customers, pricing of this solution is an issue."
"Snowflake can be improved in terms of its recent switch to a new user interface, which feels less intuitive compared to the old one."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft."
"Snowflake is cost-effective."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"Snowflake has consumption-based costs; users only pay for storage and computing."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"There is a license needed to use this solution. There are a few licensing options available. They have a pay-as-you-go option, but it is recommended to pay upfront."
"The pricing is economical as compared to traditional solutions like Oracle and competitive pricing."
"Oracle is less expensive than Snowflake."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
I am not the person who manages pricing, setup cost, and licensing. Our team is not limited in pricing. The only experience we have had in terms of running and reprocessing a large number of histor...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
One main area for improvement in Snowflake is cost visibility and optimization; while it's flexible and scalable, costs can increase quickly if warehouses are left running unnecessarily or workload...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake?
As a Data Engineer, I primarily use Snowflake for data warehousing tasks as well as ETL processing, and sometimes I also use it for data sharing. I personally find Snowflake better than other tools...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.