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SAP Business Warehouse 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

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
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (7th), AI Software Development (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 14.9%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake14.9%
SAP Business Warehouse2.4%
Other82.7%
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.
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

"We switched to SAP because the solution is more comfortable to work with."
"The best features of SAP Business Warehouse that I am fond of are how this technology handles navigational attributes and the hierarchy; these are two interesting features."
"The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us."
"In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."
"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution."
"All our processes such as funds management, grant, payroll transactions are processed automatically through this system and BW helps to collect the data for analytic needs of the department users and board members."
"The real-time information is great."
"Snowflake has evolved significantly over time. Initially, they started with scalability, but more recently, they have introduced streaming capabilities, real-time and dynamic tables, along with various connectors."
"This solution has helped our organization by being easy to maintain and having good technical support."
"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 solution's customer service is good."
"The most valuable features of Snowflake are its performance and power."
"The snapshot feature is good, the rollback feature is good and the interface is user-friendly."
"Snowflake has evolved significantly over time; initially, they started with scalability, but more recently, they have introduced streaming capabilities, real-time and dynamic tables, along with various connectors."
"Technical support is very, very good."
 

Cons

"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."
"We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least."
"I get all the information quickly, but it is one day old."
"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."
"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed."
"There are a lot of things that could be improved especially in terms of data cleansing, data management, data lineage, etc. The solution needs to offer more flexibility in terms of formulas and the query designer."
"The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive."
"There is a scope for improvement. They don't currently support integration with some of the Azure and AWS native services."
"I don't think that the AI tools in Snowflake are good."
"Snowflake has to build more capabilities because they have only built very few adapters, but they're growing and they're building. They should provide provisions to collect ETL pipeline capabilities, reduce developer work, and make more rapid application development, rather than some customizations. There are very few options, but they are building. I hope they will build ETL rapid application development provisions with more variety."
"Snowflake can improve its machine learning and AI capabilities."
"In a future release we would like to have a link which would allow us to connect to an external database and create certain views in your own database. This is because it is becoming hard for us to compare the data between multiple sources."
"We would like to be able to do modeling with Snowflake. It should support statistical modeling."
"We would like to see more security including more masking and more encryption at the database level."
"Their UiPath, the workspace area, needs some work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"There is a license needed to use this solution. There are a few licensing options available. They have a pay-as-you-go option, but it is recommended to pay upfront."
"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 a cost-effective solution."
"The solution is costly, making it unsuitable for midsize organizations due to its price."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."
"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."
"We use Snowflake pretty heavily. We pay a significant amount of money for the tool. I'd say we pay $300k to $400K every year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise60
 

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?
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

No data available
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.