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AWS Lake Formation vs Snowflake Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake Analytics
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 5.5%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake Analytics is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Ramesh Raghavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized repository, offers various cataloging mechanisms for quick data retrieval but data governance capabilities could be better
There are a couple of areas for improvement with Lake Formation. One of the main challenges, especially when dealing with rich media content, like in MarTech (Marketing Technology) or ad agencies, is its versatility. Some clients feel that Lake Formation doesn’t meet their needs and they tend to prefer competitor products for those specific use cases. The second area for improvement is in data governance. Specifically, Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance. This includes managing the entire data lineage—where the data originated, how it moves, and where it’s currently stored. The visibility of the data as it evolves is crucial, and that’s where more advanced governance capabilities would be beneficial.
Paresh_Nayak - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables data-driven decision-making with robust features and effective scalability
The internal design engine and the columnar database are particularly valuable. These features reduce input and output memory, which is crucial in handling large data sets. The solution fulfills the business requirement for scaling and analytics. Snowflake Analytics supports data security with a single sign-on feature and complies with framework regulations, which is highly beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"AWS Lake Formation works hand in hand with other products."
"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"Its structure aids in storing, managing, and analyzing large datasets in the cloud, using various relationships like one-to-one and many-to-one, ensuring consistency in the data structure."
"The solution auto-scales and it provides concurrency."
"It is quite a convenient tool."
"The most valuable feature of Snowflake Analytics is its performance."
"The platform not only provides ease of use but also stands out for its speedy execution, conveying a sense of robustness and reliability that I find appealing."
"It can run complex workloads with varied compute."
"The advanced features like time travel, zero copy cloning and scalability have been most useful. Snowflake requires zero maintenance for Data Warehousing on the cloud system."
"Features like the fact that the solution is very fast and available on the cloud are some of the valuable attributes of the solution."
 

Cons

"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"The solution could make improvements around orchestration and doing some automation stuff on AWS front automation. It would be useful if we could use automation to build images and use hardened images which are CIS compliant."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"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."
"You need to have data experience to use the product."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"One area that could benefit from enhancement is the user interface for more visual ESM features."
"Navigating the user console can be challenging, particularly when looking for details like the account ID."
"The technical support is not very good."
"The platform could work easier for AI implementation compared to one of its competitors."
"Snowflake Analytics can improve the integration with machine learning tools and AI and it will make the solution more usable."
"The solution’s interface is good but it could be improved."
"However, if it offered flexibility similar to Oracle and supported more heterogeneous data sources and database connectivity, it would be even better."
"If you have a lot of computations, it becomes very costly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
"Snowflake Analytics is a little more costly than Azure."
"I rate the product's licensing cost a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
"It's not costly if you configure it properly to ensure optimal performance. People don't configure it properly, which is why costs go up."
"When using Snowflake, you pay based on your usage. They calculate how much CPU has been used. If you use excess warehouse storage, you are charged one credit per hour. If you are in Asia, you are charged $3 per credit. If you have 10 users running parallel with the same excess, you will be charged $30."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
"Snowflake charges per query, which amounts to a very minor cost, such as $0.015 per query."
"I have been using free trial version."
"The product's pricing is subjective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Retailer
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Lake Formation?
It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
The pricing is expensive compared to OpenStack, but cheaper than other cloud environments. It's middle-of-the-road for regular storage yet very cost-effective when using Amazon Glacier for data.
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker. I would have built-in functions that provide statistics for the data when using the GUI, such as SageMaker Insig...
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?
The advantages of Snowflake Analytics outweigh the disadvantages. However, if it offered flexibility similar to Oracle and supported more heterogeneous data sources and database connectivity, it wo...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Lionsgate, Adobe, Sony, Capital One, Akamai, Deliveroo, Snagajob, Logitech, University of Notre Dame, Runkeeper
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Snowflake Analytics and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.