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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
15th
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
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Web Analytics (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.4%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake Analytics is 3.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake Analytics3.4%
SAP Business Warehouse2.4%
Other94.2%
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

"Technical support is very good, and we were very satisfied with their level of support when we needed it."
"The most useful feature has been he ability to feed data into multiple systems in various formats."
"Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution."
"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."
"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."
"BW is our bread and butter."
"The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is its hybrid functionality, allowing users to leverage both SQL-based data warehouse capabilities from HANA and feature-based data warehousing from BW."
"Having the integration with the reporting tool which is provided by SAP is great."
"It is quite a convenient tool."
"It helps with business intelligence by providing analytics that can be reported."
"Scaling is very high – there's no problem for scaling purposes. The learning curve is very small. And there are a lot of advanced features like handling duplicates, security, data governance, data sharing, and data cloning."
"The solution auto-scales and it provides concurrency."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Time Travel and Snowpipe are good features."
"Snowflake Analytics has a bright future and is capturing the market across various domains such as life sciences, BFSI, and supply chain."
"In most cases, Snowflake improves our operational efficiency if we optimize the warehouse."
 

Cons

"Areas for improvement in SAP Business Warehouse include enhancing scheduling and monitoring tools, as well as improving communication about hidden features to make them more accessible to users."
"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"A few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution."
"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product."
"It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore."
"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."
"The scheduling of jobs requires improvement, particularly in terms of the user interface which currently lacks certain features found in comparable platforms."
"The product's cost is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would prefer Snowflake Analytics to improve their support response times, as sometimes the responses we receive are not very prompt and ticket assignments may not be timely."
"Integration into different Python and Jupyter notebooks needs to be improved."
"End-to-end execution of jobs isn't possible with Snowflake, which means we have to do some customization."
"The solution needs to consider including some updates in the future."
"As of now, I have not seen ROI from Snowflake Analytics."
"The platform could work easier for AI implementation compared to one of its competitors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"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."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"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."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
"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 tool is quite expensive."
"When using Snowflake, you pay based on your usage. They calculate how much CPU has been used. If you use excess warehouse storage, you are charged one credit per hour. If you are in Asia, you are charged $3 per credit. If you have 10 users running parallel with the same excess, you will be charged $30."
"Snowflake Analytics is a little more costly than Azure."
"I have been using free trial version."
"I rate the product's licensing cost a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
17%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
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 Enterprise13
Large Enterprise23
 

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 primary use case for SAP Business Warehouse?
I am using SAP Business Warehouse in my organization for data warehousing as well as an ETL tool. Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward. Integration with SAP ER...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake Analytics?
The pricing for Snowflake Analytics is reasonable, but as I am not part of the management team, I am not certain about our organization's exact costs. Overall, the return on investment for this too...
What needs improvement with Snowflake Analytics?
One improvement Snowflake Analytics could benefit from is in cost, particularly during peak hours. Sometimes, due to its automatic scalability, we think it has scaled up, but it does not always hap...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake Analytics?
I am using Snowflake Analytics because we are already using Snowflake for data engineering and data warehousing tasks, and we are using it for analytics as well as business intelligence reporting. ...
 

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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.