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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 (70th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Analytics Platform System is 2.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 9.5%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake9.5%
Microsoft Analytics Platform System2.3%
Other88.2%
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

"I like that it's integrated with other Azure products."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"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."
"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."
"The result is a highly flexible, affordable, and scalable platform that makes large-scale Hub and Spoke EDW architectures a practical reality."
"This is a well-integrated solution and that integration empowers results."
"I think Microsoft Stack offers the end-to-end solution I need."
"We've been mostly very happy with its capabilities."
"Snowflake on cloud is the best right now."
"The most valuable feature of Snowflake is the query performance."
"It helped us to build MVP (minimum viable product) for our idea of building a data warehouse model for small businesses."
"The platform's most valuable features include its ability to effectively summarize and manage large datasets, allowing multiple teams to analyze and generate insights."
"I like the ability to work with a managed service on the cloud and that is easy to start with."
"Its speed and performance were the most valuable. Easy configuration of Snowflake in any cloud was also a benefit."
"The most valuable features are sharing data, Time Travel, Zero Copy Cloning, performance, and speed."
 

Cons

"Functionality needs to be more up-to-date with competing products."
"However, centralized EDW tends to be extremely expensive and very inflexible."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"In general, I am not really very satisfied with the tutorials that are out there."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System could have better support."
"I think the biggest problem with the product is that it does a data ingest model, which is very expensive."
"Several areas need to be improved, as follows: Cost reduction: This is always good to have, and nobody would say no to it."
"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."
"Portability is a big hurdle right now for our clients. Porting all of your existing SQL ecosystem, such as stored procedures, to Snowflake is a major pain point."
"There are a lot of features that they need to come up with. A lot of functions are missing in Snowflake, so we have to find a workaround for those. For example, OUTER APPLY is a basic function in SQL Server, but it is not there in Snowflake. So, you have to write complex code for it."
"Sometimes it can be tricky to manage multiple environments if you're purely using Snowflake as your scripting and pipeline environment."
"Currently there isn't end-to-end or B2B sharing of data."
"They do have a native connector to connect with integration tools for loading data, but it would be much better to have the functionality built-in."
"The solution could improve by allowing non-structured data, such as PDFs, images, or videos. We cannot see the data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"It's expensive."
"Oracle is less expensive than Snowflake."
"I have not been billed yet, but it should be less. I'm still running the trial version, but it seems to be less than Databricks."
"Comparing Snowflake to on-prem options such as Oracle or SAP, it seemed more cost-effective."
"Snowflake is cost-effective."
"Part of the problem with the pricing is that it is very difficult for businesses to get an idea of how expensive it might be until they actually start using Snowflake."
"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."
"Snowflake’s pricing is transparent. It is one of the cheapest cloud database warehouse providers. The tool follows a credit cost model. Everything on Snowflake is charged on the basis of credits. The credits depend on the cloud region and the public cloud provider that we use. Hence, the cost per credit will be different for AWS in Frankfurt and AWS in India. I think North Virginia is the cheapest region in terms of cost per credit. You will be consuming around 16 credits for large data warehouses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Healthcare 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 Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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: April 2026.
890,027 professionals have used our research since 2012.