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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."
"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."
"The Cube Solution is quite different when compared to the rest of the competition and has unique functionality for advanced analytics."
"I like that it's integrated with other Azure products."
"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 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."
"This is a well-integrated solution and that integration empowers results."
"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."
"The syntax is advanced which reduces the time to write code."
"This is the advanced version of the cloud version, so it's really a flexible tool."
"I don't think it is difficult to maintain."
"It was relatively easy to use, and it was easy for people to convert to it."
"For us, the virtual warehousing is likely the most valuable aspect."
"The product offers a lot of great features; architectural-wise, it's got great architecture, it's kind of decoupled from storage and has virtual warehouses, and we like that we can travel and keep things virtual."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"​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."
"The pricing model needs to be improved."
"However, centralized EDW tends to be extremely expensive and very inflexible."
"The flexibility of this solution needs to be improved because you cannot make changes at every one of the different steps."
"Hybrid environments are complex to manage."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"Support needs improvement, as it can take several days before you get some initial support."
"The pricing of the solution should be much easier to calculate or find by yourself."
"Currently there isn't end-to-end or B2B sharing of data."
"We are yet to figure out how to integrate tools, such as Liquibase, to release changes to our data warehouse model."
"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."
"Currently there isn't end-to-end or B2B sharing of data."
"The data sharing capabilities across business units within the organization should be better."
"We would like to be able to do modeling with Snowflake. It should support statistical modeling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"The price for the solution's license depends on the use cases."
"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."
"Snowflake is expensive, but when I consider what we get for that price, it's fair. I rate the solution three out of five for affordability, right in the middle."
"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."
"It is hard to say because we're usually engaged in the transition as opposed to the long term. Their storage costs are easily within pennies of what AWS S3 would normally cost. Most of the clients I've been working with are in the financial sector, and they're relatively small. I would put them in an SMB connection. The first thing we have to bring up for people is that they're going to build this. They shouldn't store their data in S3. They should pipeline directly into Snowflake and use it on their storage. So, the cost is a big issue because these are small to medium size companies, and that is the biggest thing we had to price point for them."
"Pricing is based on usage. It is the most expensive of our data tools."
"There is a licensing for this solution and we purchased an enterprise license. Overall the solution is cost-effective."
"On average, with the number of queries that we run, we pay approximately $200 USD per month."
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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 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.
894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.