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Microsoft Analytics Platform System 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

Microsoft Analytics Platfor...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
19th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
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 Microsoft Analytics Platform System is 2.4%, up from 0.7% 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%
Microsoft Analytics Platform System2.4%
Other87.4%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

MahmoudMohamed1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at Tatweer Educational Technologies Company - TETCO
Offers smooth data integration between systems, but requires better real-time analytics capabilities
We leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services. This lets us continue using private databases without paying additional licensing fees. Additionally, the license includes Analytics services and Power BI, which work on-premises, unlike most other technologies that require cloud solutions.
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

"The most valuable part of the product is that it is a system, with different tools for different services for different kinds of scenarios, making it a very rich, integrated, technology-rich platform whose total integration with the rest of Microsoft products creates flexibility and compatibility and makes the tool a very useful one."
"The Cube Solution is quite different when compared to the rest of the competition and has unique functionality for advanced analytics."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System's most valuable feature is its ecosystems and seamless integration with other Microsoft reporting platforms and databases."
"This solution will connect to any database, you can combine databases, and you can create a cube or tabular model."
"I think Microsoft Stack offers the end-to-end solution I need."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"We help customers in many ways from customized analysis for detection of anomalies in tax, operations, customer relationship, and marketing campaigns, and we also use mining and ML to help them discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"It is closely integrated with other products in the MS portfolio."
"Snowflake's most valuable features are data enrichment and flattening."
"Stability-wise, this product is good."
"The ability to share the data and the ability to scale up and down easily are the most valuable features. The concept of data sharing and data plumbing made it very easy to provide and share data. The ability to refresh your Dev or QA just by doing a clone is also valuable. It has the dynamic scale up and scale down feature. Development and deployment are much easier as compared to other platforms where you have to go through a lot of stuff. With a tool like DBT, you can do modeling and transformation within a single tool and deploy to Snowflake. It provides continuous deployment and continuous integration abilities. There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only get charged for your usage. You only pay for what you use. When we share the data downstream with business partners, we can specifically create compute for them, and we can charge back the business."
"We find the data sharing and data marketplace aspects of Snowflake absolutely amazing."
"For us, the virtual warehousing is likely the most valuable aspect."
"The most valuable feature is the clone copy."
"Snowflake has been kind of a silver bullet; it has tried to marry the best of both worlds in terms of turnaround time, scalability, adoption, and seamlessness."
"However, I would highly recommend it in terms of setting up data warehousing internally over an Azure solution, such as Synapse, or something else."
 

Cons

"Releases of new products and functionality is never accompanied by associated documentation, training and resources that adequately explain the release."
"​Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"The flexibility of this solution needs to be improved because you cannot make changes at every one of the different steps."
"We need better real-time analytics capabilities. It's a bit challenging for us."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System could have better support."
"Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"The pricing model needs to be improved."
"These aren't as crucial, but there are common errors sometimes where the database is down, or a table is nullified and a new table is added and you are not given access to that. With those errors, you don't have permissions."
"The solution needs to offer more functionality related to machine learning and artificial intelligence."
"The UI could improve because sometimes in the security query the UI freezes. We then have to close the window and restart."
"There is a scope for improvement. They don't currently support integration with some of the Azure and AWS native services."
"Sometimes it can be tricky to manage multiple environments if you're purely using Snowflake as your scripting and pipeline environment."
"The cost efficiency and monitoring of this solution could be improved. It's easy to spend a lot on Snowflake and it does offer monitoring tools but they're pretty basic."
"Snowflake is very good overall, but it could improve documentation for supporting different structures."
"I can only access Snowflake from the web. It would be better if we could have an app that we can install locally on our laptops to connect to the server without needing to go to the web page. Apart from that, it's hard to point out any limitations in the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are currently paying $200,000 a year for all the different parts of the suite during an ingest model Microsoft now charges us $700,000 a year."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"The price for the solution's license depends on the use cases."
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of queries you want on your database. The cost is small. To get the tool's pricing, you can do the math based on the cost per query, which is $0.002. If you're running your queries frequently, your charges will be higher than running fewer queries."
"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."
"The solution is expensive."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"I am not much aware of the price, but based on what I have analyzed so far, its cost is reasonable as compared to on-prem data warehouse solutions. It provides a great deal for production."
"Pricing can be confusing for customers."
"The pricing part is based on the computing and storage. The costs are different and then there are services costs as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
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 Business4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

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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

Microsoft APS, MS Analytics Platform System
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Transport for London, E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG, Prometeia, Tangerine, SSM Health Care, Service Corporation International
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,286 professionals have used our research since 2012.