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Oracle Big Data Appliance vs Snowflake comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

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

Oracle Big Data Appliance
Ranking in Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (2nd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (7th), AI Software Development (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Oracle Big Data Appliance is 2.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 10.2%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake10.2%
Oracle Big Data Appliance2.5%
Other87.3%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1031826 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analytics Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Platinum partnership leverages advanced storage and fosters seamless data integration
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less than even one-fourth or one-fifth of the Oracle price. For my side, the last time I worked with Oracle was in '21, '22. The price is a challenge that they have to look after. From the storage and data management perspective, I cannot recall anything that they have to improve, but they have to improve the visualization part significantly because they offer Oracle BI, which is an extremely not-matured application.
SunilPatil1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong
Have prioritized security while managing multi-agent data migration and cloud adoption
We utilize Time Travel with Snowflake because this is a very useful feature. Everyone finds it crucial because in conventional data platforms, it's very difficult to handle these kinds of things. This feature is essential, though I don't have the use cases currently; it is just there for implementation. Regarding Snowflake's automated scaling and suspension features, this auto-scaling is very significant. We had a comparison with Databricks and Snowflake a few months back, and this auto-scaling takes an edge within Snowflake; that's what our observation reflects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Because Big Data Appliance allows me to have a single source of truth, it means I have clean data that can be monetized and leveraged to gain more insights with real-time reports from the dashboard."
"Big Data responds to my needs."
"The best feature of Oracle Big Data Appliance, from a price perspective for the storage, is because they have technology called the ZFS technology; it offers huge storage with a decent price."
"The best thing about the product is that the end-user can build the reports by themselves without really knowing anything about databases."
"This is a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy."
"We could work on large unstructured datasets from different parts of the world on Facebook and Twitter to get better insights."
"The tool's performance is good. I think it's the best in the game right now. It usually charges per query. For example, if you run a SQL query on Snowflake with the same number of data records, it would take less than half the time compared to running it on Microsoft. It has good documentation. You can pick up Snowflake if you have previous knowledge of SQL."
"The adaptation to development languages is most valuable. Our developers can SQL code or something else. It has been convenient in that regard."
"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."
"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."
"I like the idea that you can assign roles and responsibilities, limiting access to data."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"All the people who are working with Snowflake are extremely happy with it because it is designed from a data-warehousing point of view, not the other way around. You have a database and then you tweak it and then it becomes a data warehouse."
"Snowflake is faster than on-premise systems and allows for variable compute power based on need."
 

Cons

"The product should be simplified for the average user."
"We had to pursue several performance tuning measures to bring up the system to scale."
"We need to display the results on our website. I think there is another product that joins with it to give you the possibility."
"From a technical perspective, Big Data Appliance could be improved with more innovation in the AI and machine-learning parts instead of relying on Cloudera."
"It seems like the deployment of repositories has become more difficult in later versions of the product rather than easier."
"I think that Snowflake could improve its user interface. The current one is not interactive."
"The addition of more AI capabilities in Snowflake would help us more."
"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."
"Product activation queries can't be changed while executing."
"From the documentation, the black box is not very descriptive. Snowflake does not reveal how exactly the data is processed or sourced."
"If more connectors were brought in and more visibility features were added, particularly around cost tracking in the FinOps area, it would be beneficial."
"Getting data out of the tool to third-party applications is difficult."
"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

"Oracle's prices are too high compared to others in the market."
"I believe that pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"The whole licensing system is based on credit points. You can also make a license agreement with the company so that you buy credit points and then you use them. What you do not use in one year can be carried over to the next year."
"Pricing can be confusing for customers."
"Snowflake is cost-effective. However, the cost can depend on how it's being used and how efficiently the code is written. If engineers don't write efficient code and usage is billed based on processing, it can become costly. If they write optimal code and choose the best solution, it can reduce costs in comparison to other options, such as Oracle."
"Snowflake has consumption-based costs; users only pay for storage and computing."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"It is pay-as-you-go. Its cost is in the medium range."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Oracle Big Data Appliance?
Areas of Oracle Big Data Appliance that can be improved include the pricing perspective because nowadays they have competition. We have so many technologies that have come to the market for less th...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance?
The typical use case for Oracle Big Data Appliance, which my clients use, is usually that the customer who has an Oracle application uses it because they can leverage the storage part. I don't need...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
For pricing, setup cost, and licensing, everything is managed smoothly. Regarding licensing, it is inexpensive. The setup cost is low, mainly due to AWS Marketplace; we only need to pay for serverl...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Snowflake is already quite improved, but they have recently introduced AI features. AI integration would be beneficial for direct data capturing from systems such as SAP and Salesforce to Snowflake...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake?
Snowflake is primarily used to handle the data warehousing part, for creating data modeling, and also keeping the raw data and creating reporting data so that it is further used for data analytics....
 

Also Known As

No data available
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Caixa Bank
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Big Data Appliance vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.