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IBM Db2 Warehouse vs Snowflake Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (12th)
Snowflake Analytics
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (1st), Cloud Data Warehouse (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ismail Aboulezz - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancements in data analysis and decision-making elevate overall performance
The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse ( /products/ibm-db2-warehouse-reviews ) 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 response time is very quick, and the technical manuals and support from IBM are of high quality. Additionally, it is easy to install, troubleshoot, operate, and secure the environment.
KamleshPant - PeerSpot reviewer
Data ecosystem thrives with advanced governance and streaming capabilities
It is a data offering where I can see data lineage, data governance, and data security. Snowflake has a streaming capability to work with real-time streaming data and delta tables. Additionally, task management, job scheduling, and connecting multiple data sources unify my data across internal and external sources. The system ecosystem for analytics is enhanced, and AI capabilities are incorporated.

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."
"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."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Snowflake for our data analytics are its time travel capability, allowing easy data recovery, and its automatic optimization of partitioning and clustering."
"Its performance speed is very good."
"It's a scalable solution because you can analyze a huge amount of data in the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Snowflake Analytics is its performance."
"It can run complex workloads with varied compute."
"It ensures the optimization of the application development while maintaining the user-friendly nature of its UI."
"It helps with business intelligence by providing analytics that can be reported."
"The advanced features like time travel, zero copy cloning and scalability have been most useful. Snowflake requires zero maintenance for Data Warehousing on the cloud system."
 

Cons

"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"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."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting."
"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."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"End-to-end execution of jobs isn't possible with Snowflake, which means we have to do some customization."
"Navigating the user console can be challenging, particularly when looking for details like the account ID."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"Machine learning in Snowflake isn't as advanced as in other products. I haven't heard of any successful industry-wide use cases of machine learning implemented in Snowflake. It might take a couple of years to reach the same level as Databricks."
"There are issues while loading data from Snowflake Analytics to the Power BI reporting."
"When we insert data into a large table, it takes a lot of time."
"The pricing visibility is complex. If you understand pricing, you can estimate costs, but if not, it can be challenging."
"Integration into different Python and Jupyter notebooks needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
"Snowflake charges per query, which amounts to a very minor cost, such as $0.015 per query."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"Snowflake Analytics is not an expensive solution, and its pricing is average."
"It's not costly if you configure it properly to ensure optimal performance. People don't configure it properly, which is why costs go up."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
"It is an expensive solution, but the kind of usability and flexibility it proactively provides for the organizations justify the price."
"The product's pricing is subjective."
"I have been using free trial version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
20%
Retailer
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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.
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?
There is room for improvement in optimizing certain processes, but most issues arise from my data, hardware architecture, and resources, not from IBM Db2 Warehouse itself.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake Analytics?
Snowflake is better and cheaper than Redshift and other cloud warehousing systems. It's economical.
What needs improvement with Snowflake Analytics?
Most features are already available. Perhaps AIML integration might be further needed, or Snowflake is already implementing it. AIML-based SQL prompt and query generation could be an area for enhan...
 

Also Known As

InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Lionsgate, Adobe, Sony, Capital One, Akamai, Deliveroo, Snagajob, Logitech, University of Notre Dame, Runkeeper
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Db2 Warehouse vs. Snowflake Analytics and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.