IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Snowflake comparison

IBM and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Data Warehouse category. IBM is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.8, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 2.6% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 12.5% 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

1,283 Views
937 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 101 Snowflake reviews

9,962 Views
3,586 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: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake

August 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

10th

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 September 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.6%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 12.5%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Snowflake	12.5%
IBM Db2 Warehouse	2.6%
Other	84.9%

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

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

"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."

"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."

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

"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."

"The solution is stable."

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

More IBM Db2 Warehouse pros

"My company wanted to have all our data in one single place and this what we use Snowflake for. Snowflake also allows us to build connectors to different data sources."

"The most valuable feature of Snowflake is it's an all-in-one data warehousing solution."

"Working with Parquet files is support out of the box and it makes large dataset processing much easier."

"Snowflake has three great features: Snowpiping is proving to be very valuable, Time Travel is excellent, and Snowpipes are another great functionality the solution has made available."

"The solution is very stable."

"The most valuable features are the clustering, LS50, being able to change the size, the pay per use feature, the flexibility with many different sources and analytic applications."

"The most valuable feature is the clone copy."

"It helped us to build MVP (minimum viable product) for our idea of building a data warehouse model for small businesses."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."

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

"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."

"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."

"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."

More IBM Db2 Warehouse cons

"Availability is a problem."

"I have heard people having difficulty with the machine learning model, so there may be room for improvement."

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

"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."

"They need to improve its ETL functionality so that Snowflake becomes an ETL product. Snowpipe can do some pipelines and data ingestion, but as compare to Talend, these functionalities are limited. The ETL feature is not good enough. Therefore, Snowflake can only be used as a database. You can't use it as an ETL tool, which is a limitation. We have spoken to the vendor, and they said they are working on it, but I'm not sure when they will bring it to production."

"Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve. The product is not very cheap, and a reduction in costs would be appreciated."

"The billing doubles with size increase, but processing does not necessarily speed up accordingly."

"Their strategy is just to leverage what you've got and put Snowflake in the middle. It does work well with other tools. You have to buy a separate reporting tool and a separate data loading tool, whereas, in some platforms, these tools are baked in. In the long-term, they'll need to add more direct partnerships to the ecosystem so that it's not like adding on tools around Snowflake to make it work. They can also consider including Snowflake native reporting tools versus partnering with other reporting tools. It would kind of change where they sit in the market."

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."

"Oracle is less expensive than Snowflake."

"Users have to pay a licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."

"The pricing is economical as compared to traditional solutions like Oracle and competitive pricing."

"It is pay-as-you-go. Its cost is in the medium range."

"I have worked with multiple clouds, and cost-wise, it is a bit costlier than others, such as Redshift. Its price should be reduced."

"Part of the problem with the pricing is that it is very difficult for businesses to get an idea of how expensive it might be until they actually start using Snowflake."

"Pricing is based on usage. It is the most expensive of our data tools."

"Snowflake is a cost-effective solution."

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	56

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?

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

Oracle Exadata vs IBM Db2 Warehouse

Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 12% of the time

Dremio vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Warehouse

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

August 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

August 2025

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