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SAP Business Warehouse vs Snowflake Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

SAP Business Warehouse
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake Analytics
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake Analytics is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Snowflake Analytics1.5%
SAP Business Warehouse2.3%
Other96.2%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai
Have encountered complexity with programming language while working on large-scale data integration and have experienced improved governance and reporting
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehouse, I would to see added features that simplify the product very well now. They are coming up with a terminology called SAP BDC where they are consolidating their tools, SAP Data Sphere for integration and SAP BW for the ETL and warehousing parts, and SAP Analytics Cloud. They are packaging these three features and calling it Business Data Cloud; they are fully coming on the cloud. We have to wait and watch; they have been speaking about BW/4HANA for quite some time now, but the customers or clients I work with are not finding great interest and it was seen as a candidate for evaluation. I have seen people looking at the latest technologies who are already on cloud who started building from scratch on cloud, such as Snowflake or Databricks, which can process very huge amounts of data and also address unstructured data, where SAP lags behind in cases where there is a need to bring in unstructured data. I have worked with SAP Data Intelligence, which earlier used to be called SAP Data Hub. The unstructured data is not greatly handled in SAP at this point in time.
Garima Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Principal Engineer at Nagarro
Have created secure cloud-based data lakes and improved real-time data processing using integrated AI features
There are many capabilities which Snowflake Analytics offers that I find valuable, such as the storage and compute engine that allows working with any cloud system such as AWS or Azure, alongside its efficiencies in storage computation and cost-effectiveness, which saves money compared to on-premise systems. We also have features such as pre-cached results, Time Travel, and fail-safe, which are very useful for restoring data if deleted accidentally, and the streams and data pipes that facilitate real-time ingestion are great features as well. Snowflake Analytics offers multiple new connectors, allowing me to connect it with Kafka, and with Snowpark, I can work with any programming language such as Python, Java, or Scala for data processing and analysis. The data sharing feature offered by Snowflake Analytics is good because it allows sharing specific sets of data to end customers or users from different Snowflake Analytics accounts without exposing the entire dataset for data security reasons. Snowflake Analytics' support for machine learning models and real-time insights has enhanced significantly. Originally, it wasn't strong in AI/ML, but now it has multiple models and forecasting capabilities, providing good competition to tools such as Databricks and Spark. In BI, I have worked majorly with Microsoft Power BI, and the integration with Snowflake Analytics is very easy. The way we integrate Snowflake Analytics with other on-premise systems just requires the warehouse details, username, passwords, and the account name, along with multiple options such as client ID and credentials for logging in and creating a session. The end-to-end encryption provided by Snowflake Analytics is very important because, in my previous firm, working in finance and investment management, data encryption is necessary due to the sensitive nature of customer data and the involvement of people's money. It's crucial to have encryption in transit and at rest, along with data masking features which Snowflake Analytics offers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs."
"Predominantly, our company uses SAP Business Warehouse for reporting purposes across various departments, especially for managers to gain a quick understanding of their current standing and make informed decisions."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is transformation, where I extract data from different sources, particularly the raw data. Then I do some transformations and store that in a format that allows me to do reporting easily."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"The real-time information is great."
"I like that it integrates to open-source."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice."
"One of the key advancements in Snowflake Analytics is data sharing."
"One of the distinctive features of Snowflake is its ability to handle large datasets efficiently."
"Features like the fact that the solution is very fast and available on the cloud are some of the valuable attributes of the solution."
"Snowflake Analytics' predictive analytics elements, which incorporate AI, are good and easy to integrate."
"Very good flexibility and it offers computation completely decoupled from the storage."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It ensures the optimization of the application development while maintaining the user-friendly nature of its UI."
"The platform not only provides ease of use but also stands out for its speedy execution, conveying a sense of robustness and reliability that I find appealing."
 

Cons

"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"The solution should be more open to the cloud."
"One of our requirements is the ability to easily get answers regarding trends and exceptions. In BW, it is not that easy to get such information. I expect better trend and exception detection, better pattern detection."
"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."
"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data."
"What I'd like to improve in SAP Business Warehouse is its data structure, that's a little bit rigid. It could be a bit more flexible, so you can design your data structure and improve performance when creating a solution. Currently, the way data is stored in SAP Business Warehouse is rigid."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"The pricing visibility is complex. If you understand pricing, you can estimate costs, but if not, it can be challenging."
"Snowflake Analytics should probably have more built-in tools for master data management."
"The platform could work easier for AI implementation compared to one of its competitors."
"Moving data from legacy systems to Snowflake is not that easy. There are some cases where processors are not actually compatible with Snowflake."
"Snowflake's Snowpark is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"The UI must be improved."
"Improvements are needed in importing and exporting large datasets to and from reporting tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"The licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse depends on your revenue. Its licensing structure is a little bit complicated. The more your revenue is, the higher the price, but SAP does have different pricing structures for various companies. For small businesses, licensing isn't based on revenue, but for big companies, it's revenue-based. There's some agreement regarding pricing for huge companies, so it's different, and SAP Business Warehouse pricing isn't fixed. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the licensing cost for SAP Business Warehouse as five because it's very high. As your revenue grows, your licensing cost also increases, so you have to factor that in when calculating your cost."
"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."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing a seven. The solution's pricing is high."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"Snowflake charges per query, which amounts to a very minor cost, such as $0.015 per query."
"It is an expensive solution, but the kind of usability and flexibility it proactively provides for the organizations justify the price."
"Snowflake Analytics is not an expensive solution, and its pricing is average."
"The cost of Snowflake Analytics is low, any small organization can use it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Retailer
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?
The pricing for SAP Business Warehouse is on the expensive side. I am not sure about the current costing model as such. In my experience on cloud, I did not use BW HANA Cloud. I used the cloud prod...
What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?
The only complexity I find with the product is the programming language; people find it harder, but once you know the language, it's not that difficult. Regarding the future of SAP Business Warehou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake Analytics?
Snowflake Analytics is quite economical. It does not appear to incur significant extra expenses beyond the solution's initial cost. However, a complete pricing analysis is still in progress.
What needs improvement with Snowflake Analytics?
In my opinion, Snowflake Analytics can be improved by introducing more features, such as additional integration options. I remember using Snowflake Pro, which allows exporting direct data into the ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Lionsgate, Adobe, Sony, Capital One, Akamai, Deliveroo, Snagajob, Logitech, University of Notre Dame, Runkeeper
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake Analytics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.