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IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 26, 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
Ranking in Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.9%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 11.6%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Snowflake11.6%
IBM Db2 Warehouse2.9%
Other85.5%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.
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

"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."
"The solution is stable."
"It's user-friendly. It's SQL-driven. The fact that business can also go to this application and query because they know SQL is the biggest factor."
"It's ultra-fast at handling queries, which is what we find very convenient."
"For us, the virtual warehousing is likely the most valuable aspect."
"The pricing is reasonable and matches the rest of the market."
"Its speed and performance were the most valuable. Easy configuration of Snowflake in any cloud was also a benefit."
"Once you have finished your designs they can be easily imported to Snowflake and the information can be readily accessed without an IT expert."
"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 thing I find most valuable is that scalability, space storage, and computing power is separate. When you scale up, it is live from one second to the next — constantly available as you scale — so there is no downtime or interruption of services."
 

Cons

"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."
"There are some challenges with loading unstructured data and integrating some message queues or brokers. In one project, we had a problem connecting to one of the message queues and we had to take a different route altogether on Microsoft Azure."
"Snowflake could improve if they had an Operational Data Store(ODS) space."
"The user interface continues to be an issue, especially when we need to get data out of Snowflake. It's very easy to get data in, but it's not too easy to get it out or extract it."
"The price could be improved."
"Availability is a problem."
"The solution needs more connectors."
"Support needs improvement, as it can take several days before you get some initial support."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"The pricing is economical as compared to traditional solutions like Oracle and competitive pricing."
"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."
"The price of Snowflake is very reasonable."
"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."
"It is on a monthly basis. It is based on your usage. There are no additional costs from the point of the licensing fee. We do give some kind of evaluation to the customers about how much it is going to be. You can decide in Snowflake the virtual machine that you are using for customers. There are several kinds of virtual machines that you can use. It is similar to the clothing sizes: small to extra large. If you need more power in the coming month, you can decide in advance and take a more powerful machine. You can just select it from the platform. You can also decide which machine you want to take for extracting data."
"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."
"The product's price range falls between average to a bit expensive range. I think the tool is worth the money if you use it properly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
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?
Pricing is quite high for Snowflake Data Cloud, which is an area that could be improved. Snowflake Data Cloud is still beneficial to use, but only if you can afford it. It can be cost-effective if ...
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.