AWS Lake Formation vs Snowflake comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.1, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.3% mindshare in CDW, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 15.4% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

AWS Lake Formation

Read 21 AWS Lake Formation reviews

2,858 Views
2,201 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 108 Snowflake reviews

19,422 Views
8,740 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

AWS Lake Formation

Snowflake

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

Snowflake and AWS Lake Formation are two prominent solutions for managing data storage and access in the cloud. Snowflake has a favorable edge with users for pricing and support due to its scalability and flexibility, while AWS Lake Formation is seen as superior regarding security features, integrated AWS ecosystem capabilities, and cost-effectiveness for larger infrastructure deployments.

Features: Snowflake offers seamless scalability, high-speed distributed processing, and supports diverse file formats like CSV, JSON, and GZIP. AWS Lake Formation is known for its robust security features, ease of connection within the AWS environment, and presenting a unified ecosystem for AWS-native services users.

Room for Improvement: Snowflake could enhance its spatial capabilities, streamline Snowpipe auto-ingestion, and improve pricing transparency. AWS Lake Formation could integrate better with third-party services, enhance data governance, and improve cross-account sharing capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Snowflake is praised for its scalability and ease of deployment, although its support lacks SLAs. AWS Lake Formation excels in seamless deployment within AWS but may be less flexible across non-AWS environments, with responsive customer service, facing complexities in customized support.

Pricing and ROI: Snowflake's consumption-based pricing is seen as high compared to cloud services like Redshift but offers strong ROI through productivity enhancements. AWS Lake Formation is reasonably priced within the AWS ecosystem, enhancing ROI through integration benefits and comprehensive service offerings.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake

November 2026

Download the complete report

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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

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

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

108

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th), AI Software Development (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 3.3%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 15.4%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Snowflake	15.4%
AWS Lake Formation	3.3%
Other	81.3%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Ciro Baldim Guerra

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.

Read full review

SunilPatil1

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"We use this to reduce latency from minutes to seconds, as we aim for real-time visibility into patient healthcare monitoring."

"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."

"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."

"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."

"In the shortest form, what I appreciated about AWS Lake Formation was that the schema definition and data cataloging were quite good."

"The most valuable features of AWS Lake Formation were the access model itself, as it allows implementation of filters, Blueprints, and row-level and column-level security to mask data that shouldn't be accessed by certain entities, enabling granular control without exposing PII data."

"Every solution has its pros and cons, however, for our purposes, this solution works quite well for us."

"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."

More AWS Lake Formation pros

"The speed of data loading and being able to quickly create the environment are most valuable."

"The initial setup is straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation."

"They separate compute and storage. You can scale storage independently of the computer, or you can scale computing independently of storage. If you need to buy more computer parts you can add new virtual warehouses in Snowflake. Similarly, if you need more storage, you take more storage. It's most scalable in the database essentially; typically you don't have this scalability independence on-premises."

"It is very fast and the performance is great."

"By integrating everything into a single Snowflake platform, we have lowered the total cost of ownership quite a bit."

"Great scalability and near zero maintenance."

"Snowflake has improved our organization by powering company-wide dashboards that functions use to understand and manage their business."

"The pricing is reasonable and matches the rest of the market."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."

"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."

"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."

"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."

"I think AWS Lake Formation could improve by enforcing the least privilege by design, moving from ad hoc grants to role-based access controls."

"AWS Lake Formation might not be easy to learn initially, especially for technical staff, due to various underlying options."

"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."

More AWS Lake Formation cons

"Getting data out of the tool to third-party applications is difficult."

"It would benefit from an administration that allows you to be aware of your credit consumption once you have the service so that you may be sure how many credits you are consuming when you use the platform and to make sure that you are making the most efficient use of these resources. In other words, to improve their interface so that you may monitor the consumption of your credits on Cloud."

"Several areas need to be improved, as follows: Cost reduction: This is always good to have, and nobody would say no to it."

"The addition of more AI capabilities in Snowflake would help us more."

"Sometimes, I face some issues like not having permissions. These aren't as crucial, but there are common errors sometimes where the database is down, or a table is nullified and a new table is added and you are not given access to that."

"The scheduling system can definitely be better because we had to use external airflow for that. There should be orchestration for the scheduling system. Snowflake currently does not support machine learning, so it is just storage. They also need some alternatives for SQL Query. There should also be support for Spark in different languages such as Python."

"Snowflake could improve migration. It should be made easier. It would be beneficial if it could offer some OLTP features. One of our customers was using Oracle for both data warehousing and OLTP workloads, and they were able to migrate their data warehousing workloads to Snowflake without major issues. However, for some of their OLTP requirements, such as needing a response time of fewer than 10 milliseconds for certain queries, Snowflake is currently unable to provide that."

"The scheduling system can definitely be better because we had to use external airflow for that."

More Snowflake cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."

"It's expensive."

"I have worked with multiple clouds, and cost-wise, it is a bit costlier than others, such as Redshift. Its price should be reduced."

"Snowflake licensing is more flexible and it is cheaper than other solutions. I can use it for only 10 days for MVP, or three years, and for flexible models. I can scale up, or down, and the pricing is based on the volume and duration. There are many licensing permutation combinations available."

"Snowflake is expensive, but when I consider what we get for that price, it's fair. I rate the solution three out of five for affordability, right in the middle."

"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 solution is expensive but worth the cost because the quality is there."

"Snowflake goes by credits. For a financial institution where you have 5,000 employees, monthly costs may run up to maybe $5,000 to $6,000. This is actually based on the usage. It is mostly the compute cost. Your computing cost is the variable that is actually based on your usage. It is pay-per-use. In a pay-per-use case, you won't be spending more than $6,000 to $7,000 a month. It is not more than that for a small or medium enterprise, and it may come down to $100K per year. Storage is very standard, which is $23 a terabyte. It is not much for any enterprise. If you have even 20 terabytes, you are not spending more than $400 per month, which may turn out to be $2,000 to $3,000 per annum."

"The price of Snowflake is very reasonable."

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Outsourcing Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	61

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...

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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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?

We find the metering and billing experience for Snowflake to be expensive because there are many limitations to what it can do. When we compared performance-wise and cost-wise to Bedrock for some o...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Snowflake?

Lessons learned about our main use case or how Snowflake performed in those areas include that the sales representatives do not really understand the product, and that the solutions consultants bas...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Snowflake?

Our main use case for Snowflake was to ingest data, use it for search, analytics, and data sharing with our customers; however, in reality, those use cases did not work. When it came to our challen...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon Redshift vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 8% of the time

BigQuery vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs AWS Lake Formation

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS Lake Formation Competitors

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Databricks vs Snowflake

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Snowflake

Compared 4% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs Snowflake

Compared 4% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation

November 2026

Download AWS Lake Formation product report

Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

October 2026

Download Snowflake product report

Also Known As

No data available

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

AWS Lake Formation streamlines data lake organization by integrating seamlessly with AWS services, ensuring robust access control, and facilitating effective data management. Its extensible framework and centralized data handling make it ideal for cloud environments that require scalability.

AWS Lake Formation offers comprehensive data synchronization with AWS, robust security through fine-grained policies, and seamless team collaboration tools. It centralizes data assets, supports analytics with Glue, and enhances data mesh structures. Its IAM integration supports efficient governance, with reliable data storage and retrieval backed by extensive documentation. While highly efficient within AWS ecosystems, Lake Formation faces integration challenges with third-party libraries, and users experience clutter in its interface. Aspects such as automation, policy management, and debugging are areas for improvement. Enhancements in orchestration, cross-account sharing, and integrations with services like SageMaker are user recommendations.

What are the key features of AWS Lake Formation?

Data Synchronization: Integrates with AWS services for seamless data management.
Security Policies: Implements fine-grained access control for secure data handling.
Team Collaboration: Facilitates cooperation through centralized data management.
Analytics Support: Enhances data processing with Glue integration.
Extensibility: IAM integration allows scalable governance.

What benefits or ROI can users expect?

Scalability: Efficiently manages expanding data volumes.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces cloud data management expenses.
Data Security: Ensures compliance with robust policies.
Comprehensive Support: Access to detailed documentation and AWS resources.

Organizations utilize AWS Lake Formation across various industries to build and manage data lakes, ensuring effective data governance and storage solutions. It helps integrate and transform data, control permissions, and support analytics. From e-commerce to healthcare, AWS Lake Formation delivers centralized data repositories for structured and unstructured data, securing information while providing scalable infrastructure and efficient resource management.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Snowflake provides a modern data warehousing solution with features designed for seamless integration, scalability, and consumption-based pricing. It handles large datasets efficiently, making it a market leader for businesses migrating to the cloud.

Snowflake offers a flexible architecture that separates storage and compute resources, supporting efficient ETL jobs. Known for scalability and ease of use, it features built-in time zone conversion and robust data sharing capabilities. Its enhanced security, performance, and ability to handle semi-structured data are notable. Users suggest improvements in UI, pricing, on-premises integration, and data science functions, while calling for better transaction performance and machine learning capabilities. Users benefit from effective SQL querying, real-time analytics, and sharing options, supporting comprehensive data analysis with tools like Tableau and Power BI.

What are Snowflake's Key Features?

Scalability: Easily adjusts to handle growing data volumes.
Seamless Integration: Works with a wide range of platforms.
Consumption-Based Costs: Pay only for what you use.
Time Travel: Access historical data effortlessly.
Data Sharing: Secure and efficient sharing of datasets.
Time Zone Conversion: Built-in feature for global operations.
Security: Robust measures to protect sensitive information.
Compute and Storage Separation: Independent scaling for optimal performance.

What Benefits Should You Look for?

Cost Efficiency: Optimized pricing models for minimal waste.
Enhanced Performance: Fast queries and processing times.
Flexibility: Handles both structured and semi-structured data.
Analytics Capabilities: Supports advanced data analysis and reporting.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Snowflake's flexible data warehousing and analytics capabilities facilitate cloud migration, streamline data storage, and allow organizations to consolidate data from multiple sources for advanced insights and AI-driven strategies. Its integration with analytics tools supports comprehensive data analysis and reporting tasks.

Snowflake Computing

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday

Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops

Buyer's Guide

AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake

November 2026

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