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IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

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

IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 18.1%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

FM
Enhancing analytics with seamless data dumping and reliable support
Our primary use case is data storage and analytics The organization has decided to purchase a full stack solution from IBM due to positive responses, which helped them upgrade from the previous version. The data dumping into the raw zone and the feature of BigQuery is quite attractive. There…
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Transformation in data querying speed with good migration capabilities
Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses. One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations. It also has tools for migrating data from legacy databases like Oracle. Its stability and efficiency enhance performance greatly. Tools in the AI/ML marketplace are readily available without needing development.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It will be MPP, so performance should improve."
"The performance is okay as long as the volume of queries is not too high."
"It is stable when there is support from IBM."
"The way that it scales will help a lot of customers that are stuck with Netezza boxes that can't grow any larger.​"
"Its performance is most valuable. As compared to SQL Server, we are able to see a significant improvement in performance with Snowflake."
"As long as you don't need to worry about the storage or cost, this solution would be one of the best ones on the market for scalability purposes."
"The ETL and data ingestion capabilities are better in this solution as compared to SQL Server. SQL Server doesn't do much data ingestion, but Snowflake can do it quite conveniently."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The tool is very easy to use. The solution’s desktop features are also very easy to use. Also, the product’s SQL-based connectivity is also good. It can connect with any tool."
"Its speed and performance were the most valuable. Easy configuration of Snowflake in any cloud was also a benefit."
"Can be leveraged with respect to better performance, auto tuning and competition."
"The most valuable feature of Snowflake is it's an all-in-one data warehousing solution."
 

Cons

"Ultimately, the product itself has challenges and we are not currently satisfied with the support, either."
"Right now, we are implementing on ESX VMware 6.0. Support for this platform is poor. Also, one of the backup/recovery options is broken and IBM is not addressing the issue."
"Containers get corrupted very easily. Restoring them using GPFS can result in a lot of issues."
"Tech support for dashDB is awful. We usually have tickets open for three to four weeks."
"There are some limitations in adding data files to table spaces, and improvements are needed for regional support."
"Currently, Snowflake doesn't support unstructured data."
"The product's performance could be improved."
"If we can have a feature where the results can be moved to different tabs, so that I can compare the results with earlier queries before applying the changes, it would be great."
"Snowflake has to improve their spatial parts since it doesn't have much in terms of geo-spatial queries."
"Sometimes it can be tricky to manage multiple environments if you're purely using Snowflake as your scripting and pipeline environment."
"I don't know about GCP, if they have connected for GCP. If they don't, they should allow for it."
"The complexity of the initial setup of Snowflake depends on the use case. However, Snowflake itself, we don't set it up. The difficulty comes from the ingestion patterns, depending on what data I'm putting in, what kind of enrichment, and what additional value we have to add. However, it does tend to get complex because we have a lot of semi-structured data which we need to handle in Snowflake. There have been some challenges."
"There are three things that came to my notice. I am not very sure whether they have already done it. The first one is very specific to the virtual data warehouse. Snowflake might want to offer industry-specific models for the data warehouse. Snowflake is a very strong product with credit. For a typical retail industry, such as the pharma industry, if it can get into the functional space as well, it will be a big shot in their arm. The second thing is related to the migration from other data warehouses to Snowflake. They can make the migration a little bit more seamless and easy. It should be compatible, well-structured, and well-governed. Many enterprises have huge impetus and urgency to move to Snowflake from their existing data warehouse, so, naturally, this is an area that is critical. The third thing is related to the capability of dealing with relational and dimensional structures. It is not that friendly with relational structures. Snowflake is more friendly with the dimensional structure or the data masks, which is characteristic of a Kimball model. It is very difficult to be savvy and friendly with both structures because these structures are different and address different kinds of needs. One is manipulation-heavy, and the other one is read-heavy or analysis-heavy. One is for heavy or frequent changes and amendments, and the other one is for frequent reads. One is flat, and the other one is distributed. There are fundamental differences between these two structures. If I were to consider Snowflake as a silver bullet, it should be equally savvy on both ends, which I don't think is the case. Maybe the product has grown and scaled up from where it was."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If your going to go with warehouse DB/dashDB, use the cloud or Sailfish version."
"We used Snowflake to see if it is cheaper than using BigQuery. It was just to maintain the cost or the KPI regarding the cost of connectivity by users. Snowflake wasn't cheaper than BigQuery, and its affordability was the main issue."
"You need to be aware of the bloating costs. It is easy to use, but if you don't use it wisely, then your monthly bill can bloat a lot. You need to be a bit aware of its consumption cost."
"There is a licensing for this solution and we purchased an enterprise license. Overall the solution is cost-effective."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"You pay based on the data that you are storing in the data warehouse and there are no maintenance costs."
"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."
"We use Snowflake pretty heavily. We pay a significant amount of money for the tool. I'd say we pay $300k to $400K every year."
"They give a different price for every single company. I don't know if I negotiated that well, but we got the enterprise tier for $3 a credit, and the other two were a dollar-ninety a credit. I suspect we don't have almost zero compute usage, but I know that our annual contract packages are below all of their minimums."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud?
Organizations of all sizes, especially those who are in need of powerful and elastic cloud data warehouse solutions that can help administrators maximize the efficiency of their data-based operatio...
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud?
There are some limitations in adding data files to table spaces, and improvements are needed for regional support.
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud?
Our primary use case is data storage and analytics.
What do you like most about Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
It is complicated to understand how requests impact warehouse size. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Databricks ( /products/databricks-reviews ), Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating ...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
There is a need for a tool to help me estimate the cost of using Snowflake. Enhancements in user experience for data observability and quality checks would be beneficial, as these tasks currently r...
 

Also Known As

IBM dashDB
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Copenhagen Business School, BPM Northwest, GameStop
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse on Cloud vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.