IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Snowflake comparison

IBM and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Data Warehouse category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 2.5% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 14.0% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Read 12 IBM Db2 Warehouse reviews

1,297 Views
921 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 101 Snowflake reviews

11,713 Views
4,100 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Snowflake

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

IBM Db2 Warehouse and Snowflake are both top players in the cloud data warehousing space. Snowflake appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced scalability and flexibility, making it suitable for rapidly growing data needs.

Features: IBM Db2 Warehouse offers strong integration within IBM's suite, efficient data storage, and robust security features. Snowflake provides dynamic scaling, seamless data sharing abilities, and support for both structured and semi-structured data.

Room for Improvement: IBM Db2 Warehouse could improve in terms of scalability and the complexity of its setup. It also requires a significant upfront investment. Snowflake might enhance its support for enterprise-level connectivity and increase its focus on integrated security features. Additionally, Snowflake could improve its cost predictability for users not familiar with consumption-based pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Db2 Warehouse offers a more structured deployment model, benefiting from IBM's comprehensive support. In contrast, Snowflake provides a streamlined, cloud-native deployment process, allowing quicker setup and simpler operations.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Db2 Warehouse generally involves higher upfront licensing and integration costs, possibly leading to longer ROI periods. Snowflake's pay-as-you-go pricing model offers better flexibility, providing potentially quicker returns on investment with its scalable resources.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

July 2025

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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

IBM Db2 Warehouse

Ranking in Data Warehouse

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

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 July 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 14.0%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Sherpard Muzuva

Senior Technical Manager- IBM Enterprise Systems at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)

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.

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Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

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.

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

"IBM Db2 Warehouse is more resilient when dealing with business intelligence applications."

"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."

"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."

"Provides good security and reliability."

"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."

"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."

"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."

"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."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse pros

"Snowflake is faster than on-premise systems and allows for variable compute power based on need."

"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."

"The distributed architecture of Snowflake has the capacity to process huge datasets faster and allows us to scale up and down according to our needs."

"The syntax is advanced which reduces the time to write code."

"The product is quite fast."

"I like the fact that we don't need a DBA. It automatically scales stuff."

"The initial setup is very simple."

"The solution's customer service is good."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"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."

"It takes a long time to have a new version or release, similar to Oracle."

"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."

"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."

"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."

"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."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

"The documentation could improve. They should provide architecture information."

"Pricing is an issue for many customers."

"We are yet to figure out how to integrate tools, such as Liquibase, to release changes to our data warehouse model."

"Snowflake could improve if they had an Operational Data Store(ODS) space."

"I would like to see a client version of the GUI."

"Snowflake needs to improve its programming part. Though the tool has Snowpath, it doesn’t support all features like its competitor, Databricks. Snowflake doesn’t support external data ingestion capabilities. You need to have third-party tools for that. Also, the tool needs to incorporate data integration features in its future releases."

"The solution could improve by allowing non-structured data, such as PDFs, images, or videos. We cannot see the data."

"We would like to be able to do modeling with Snowflake. It should support statistical modeling."

More Snowflake cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."

"It is hard to say because we're usually engaged in the transition as opposed to the long term. Their storage costs are easily within pennies of what AWS S3 would normally cost. Most of the clients I've been working with are in the financial sector, and they're relatively small. I would put them in an SMB connection. The first thing we have to bring up for people is that they're going to build this. They shouldn't store their data in S3. They should pipeline directly into Snowflake and use it on their storage. So, the cost is a big issue because these are small to medium size companies, and that is the biggest thing we had to price point for them."

"I have not been billed yet, but it should be less. I'm still running the trial version, but it seems to be less than Databricks."

"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."

"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 price of the solution is reasonable."

"The solution is expensive."

"Pricing can be confusing for customers."

"I believe that pricing is reasonable for this solution."

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Warehouse?

The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?

See all answers

What do you like most about Snowflake?

The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 15% of the time

Dremio vs Snowflake

Compared 8% of the time

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

AWS Lake Formation vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

July 2025

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Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

InfoSphere Warehouse is a suite of products that combines the strength of DB2 with a data warehousing infrastructure from IBM. You can use InfoSphere Warehouse to build a complete data warehousing solution that includes a highly scalable relational database, data access capabilities, and front-end analysis tools.

IBM

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

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

July 2025

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