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AWS Snowball vs Palantir Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 11, 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 Snowball
Ranking in Data Migration Appliances
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (13th)
Palantir Foundry
Ranking in Data Migration Appliances
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (5th), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Supply Chain Analytics (1st), Cloud Data Integration (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (1st), Data and Analytics Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Migration Appliances category, the mindshare of AWS Snowball is 33.0%, down from 40.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palantir Foundry is 6.9%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Migration Appliances Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Snowball33.0%
Palantir Foundry6.9%
Other60.1%
Data Migration Appliances
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin-Davis - PeerSpot reviewer
Global CTO AWS Business Group at Eviden
Seamless data transfer and efficient migration with customizable storage sizes
I like that I can take data and send it straight to S3 when it loads in. The interface for getting my data onto the Snowball is so streamlined. I don't know if you've ever seen it before. It's really cool. I connect them to the backplane of our existing network. I'm able to address it quickly and move the data quickly inside my customers' data centers. There's a little screen on it, which changes the UPS codes and all that stuff. The label and everything AWS electronic, so I don't have to deal with shipping issues. It makes it super simple and easy to use from end to end.
reviewer2846265 - PeerSpot reviewer
PALANTIR DATA ENGINEER at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Unified healthcare pipelines have improved data trust and accelerated operational decisions
One challenge regarding how Palantir Foundry can be improved is the learning curve. Foundry has a very broad ecosystem with Ontology, Pipeline Builder, Code Repositories, and AI integrations. For new engineers or business users onboarding, it can take time, especially if they are coming from more traditional data platforms. Better documentation, simplified onboarding paths, and more beginner-friendly examples would help accelerate adoption. Another area is debugging complexity. While lineage and monitoring are strong features, troubleshooting deeply interconnected pipelines can still become difficult in a large enterprise environment. Sometimes error logs and pipeline failure messages could be more descriptive or developer-friendly, especially for distributed PySpark jobs. Another pain point is customization limitations in certain UI-driven components. While low-code tools are great for rapid development, highly customized workflows sometimes still require engineering workarounds or deeper technical implementation. The platform is extremely capable, but improvements around usability, debugging experience, DevOps flexibility, and ecosystem openness would make it even more effective for enterprise engineering teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The flexibility of AWS Snowball is valuable. Its security allows for the ability to move and secure data without concern if the device is lost and the option to trace it back to AWS data centers."
"The solution is elastic."
"I like that I can take data and send it straight to S3 when it loads in."
"The features I like best are the tool's high capacity, scalability, end-to-end encryption for data security, ease of use, durability, and cost-effectiveness. It's particularly cost-effective for transferring large amounts of data compared to high-speed internet transfers."
"You are able to scale the solution vertically. It's very scalable."
"It's a nice way of shipping a lot of data without using a network."
"AWS offers managed services which save time and reduce administrative overhead."
"From our point of view, one of the most important features are the ability to combine, to mesh data together, and the ability to have them compute out of AWS rather than buying our own infrastructure."
"After we automated the entire workflow on Palantir Foundry, it ran really well in terms of time and correctness, and also data quality."
"The solution offers very good end-to-end capabilities."
"From my experience with Palantir Foundry, the most useful feature is its no-code, low-code environment, allowing me to develop applications without extensive coding, unlike my past as an Oracle developer where I had to write code for various functions."
"Palantir Foundry has positively impacted my organization mainly by consolidating our data management, so we do not need multiple accounts for different applications and can keep all our data within Palantir Foundry while accessing all applications from there without moving data between locations."
"Palantir Foundry has positively impacted my organization through multiple use cases, such as warranty data refinement, where previously we struggled with identifying the number of claims related to specific products."
"With Palantir Foundry, it helps us have better benefits and better return on investment, and also accelerates the right decision in the market."
"Palantir Foundry gives me a unified view of AI and my engineering space while I have been doing a lot of data engineering in a couple of technologies, bringing that data together and stitching them and putting together AI, enabling AI use cases, which makes me see a holistic view of data coming from various platforms."
"Palantir Foundry has proven to be a great tool in terms of scalability for me, especially compared to Power BI, which felt inadequate, as its scalability depends on the Slate application and I am only limited by my imagination."
 

Cons

"It's not cheap."
"Snowball is not interesting and is a pain to deal with."
"There's always room for improvement as you use the service more and gain expertise. Some challenges I've faced include the time factor (data transfer can be time-consuming), data validation after the transfer, risks associated with physical handling and shipping of the device, and ensuring data security during transit."
"It does have room for improvement. The ability to better ingest some of the big data."
"It's not an easy product to start using for a beginner, but If you're a professional, it's easy to understand."
"I think AWS Snowball could improve by expanding its availability to more countries."
"24/7 support is more expensive on AWS compared to Azure."
"It would be helpful if Snowball provided more kinds of connectivity. That will make it easier to add and move data."
"Palantir Foundry could be improved by addressing the need for some coding in the Workshop since we cannot expect 100% no-code functionality, especially when dealing with dynamic user input, which requires writing functions in the Code Repository."
"Always having to work with a Palantir representative creates severe bottlenecks and increases costs, making it desirable for me as the end user to perform tasks without constant requests for support."
"Palantir Foundry needs more resources to understand and train new, incoming resources to understand the basic knowledge of the entire platform."
"Customer support should definitely be a concern, especially for the dev tier account I have been using, while for a corporate account, it is pretty good."
"However, Palantir Foundry's license fees comparative to others are quite high."
"As a developer, I find the limited documentation and less resource availability restrictive compared to other options such as AWS."
"Palantir Foundry can be improved by providing more third-party application support and more support for the Ontology software development kit to develop more native applications rather than just web applications."
"I choose eight out of ten because the software still needs a lot of updates to make it stable, and today, it is not stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not a cheap solution, but the price is right for the product."
"The tool's pricing depends on the type of Snowball device you choose, the amount of data you need to transfer, and the service fees involved. There’s a standard price for larger data transfers and a flat job fee, which includes the first ten days of on-site usage. Typically, there are no additional data transfer fees."
"Palantir Foundry has different pricing models that can be negotiated."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"It's expensive."
"Palantir Foundry is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Microsoft Azure Data Box or AWS Snowball?
Microsoft Azure Databox is a 45-pound, super rugged, tamper-resistant, human-managed hardware appliance that can transfer up to 100TB of data capacity to copy, store, then send to the Azure cloud. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Snowball?
Depending of what is your priority; UseAWS Snowball if you are heavily invested in AWS or need edge computing features Choose Azure Data Box for smooth integration with Azure and potentially lower ...
What needs improvement with AWS Snowball?
It's difficult to make a comparison and it depends on the customer. When analyzing costs, I must see how the customer uses AWS, Azure, or Google. Google is particularly interesting, for example, fo...
What needs improvement with Palantir Foundry?
One challenge regarding how Palantir Foundry can be improved is the learning curve. Foundry has a very broad ecosystem with Ontology, Pipeline Builder, Code Repositories, and AI integrations. For n...
What is your primary use case for Palantir Foundry?
I use Palantir Foundry for my primary use case, which involves building and maintaining end-to-end pipelines and operational data products at UHG for our healthcare analytics team. I work on data i...
What advice do you have for others considering Palantir Foundry?
My advice would be to approach Palantir Foundry as an enterprise operational platform, not just a traditional data tool. The platform delivers the most value when organizations fully leverage its g...
 

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Snowball, Amazon Snowball, Snowball
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wazee Digital, Craftsy, Live Nation, Essess
Merck KGaA, Airbus, Ferrari,United States Intelligence Community, United States Department of Defense
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Snowball vs. Palantir Foundry and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.