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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
20th
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
105
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (7th), AI Software Development (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Analytics Platform System is 2.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 9.3%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake9.3%
Microsoft Analytics Platform System2.2%
Other88.5%
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 result is a highly flexible, affordable, and scalable platform that makes large-scale Hub and Spoke EDW architectures a practical reality."
"It is closely integrated with other products in the MS portfolio."
"I like that it's integrated with other Azure products."
"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."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"This solution will connect to any database, you can combine databases, and you can create a cube or tabular model."
"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."
"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 a cloud solution with many useful features, has data science capability, and can transform and prepare data for a data science project with scalability."
"The product is stable and the performance is excellent."
"Excellent performance Very easy to use Amazing UI"
"It is a very good platform. It can handle structured and semi-structured data, and it can be used for your data warehouse or data lake. It can load and deal with any data that you have. It can extract data from an on-premises database or a website and make it available in the cloud. It has very fast implementation and integration as compared to other solutions. There is no need for the DBA to manage or do the day-to-day DBA tasks, which is one of the greatest things about it."
"It was relatively easy to use, and it was easy for people to convert to it."
"The pricing is reasonable and matches the rest of the market."
"The solution is very stable."
"We decided to go with Snowflake because it seemed mature and had what we wanted."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Analytics Platform System could have better support."
"The pricing model needs to be improved."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"We need better real-time analytics capabilities. It's a bit challenging for us."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"I think the biggest problem with the product is that it does a data ingest model, which is very expensive."
"Functionality needs to be more up-to-date with competing products."
"If more connectors were brought in and more visibility features were added, particularly around cost tracking in the FinOps area, it would be beneficial."
"The pricing of the solution should be much easier to calculate or find by yourself."
"The documentation could improve."
"Every product has room for improvement, although in this case, it needs some broadening of the functionality."
"The documentation could improve. They should provide architecture information."
"There are some stored procedures that we've had trouble with. The solution also needs to fine-tune the connectors to be able to connect into the system source."
"They need to improve its ETL functionality so that Snowflake becomes an ETL product."
"They should improve the reporting tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"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."
"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
"The price for the solution's license depends on the use cases."
"Snowflake goes by credits. For a financial institution where you have 5,000 employees, monthly costs may run up to maybe $5,000 to $6,000. This is actually based on the usage. It is mostly the compute cost. Your computing cost is the variable that is actually based on your usage. It is pay-per-use. In a pay-per-use case, you won't be spending more than $6,000 to $7,000 a month. It is not more than that for a small or medium enterprise, and it may come down to $100K per year. Storage is very standard, which is $23 a terabyte. It is not much for any enterprise. If you have even 20 terabytes, you are not spending more than $400 per month, which may turn out to be $2,000 to $3,000 per annum."
"The solution is expensive."
"On average, with the number of queries that we run, we pay approximately $200 USD per month."
"The solution is costly, making it unsuitable for midsize organizations due to its price."
"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"The product's price range falls between average to a bit expensive range. I think the tool is worth the money if you use it properly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 Enterprise60
 

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: May 2026.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.