SAP Business Warehouse vs Snowflake comparison

SAP and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Cloud Data Warehouse category. SAP is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.0, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. SAP holds a 2.1% mindshare in CDW, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 17.7% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SAP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

SAP Business Warehouse

Read 25 SAP Business Warehouse reviews

730 Views
511 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 101 Snowflake reviews

9,251 Views
6,568 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

SAP Business Warehouse

Snowflake

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2025

Snowflake and SAP Business Warehouse are significant contenders in the data warehousing category. Snowflake appears to have the upper hand due to its scalability, performance, and flexible pricing, which is recognized for delivering promising ROI and operational cost reductions.

Features: Snowflake stands out with its scalability, performance, and flexibility, offering diverse data processing capabilities. It is known for efficiently handling massive datasets, powered by its ability to load petabytes of data and perform quick transformations. SAP Business Warehouse is notable for its deep integration with other SAP systems and its strength in structurally managing complex datasets, which is a significant advantage for businesses using a complete SAP suite.

Room for Improvement: Snowflake can enhance its spatial support, streamline Snowpipe auto-ingest features, and improve pricing transparency. Users point out challenges with integration and desire more user-friendly interfaces. SAP Business Warehouse is considered expensive, with suggestions for improving its intuitive design, flexibility, and integration with newer SAP solutions, as well as reducing complexity in setup configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Snowflake utilizes the public cloud, ensuring speedy deployment and solid customer support, although some users mention occasional delays. SAP Business Warehouse operates on private and hybrid clouds, benefiting from robust integration with on-premise systems. Its customer service is praised, but there are concerns about its cost and response speed.

Pricing and ROI: Snowflake has a cost-effective model based on capacity and usage, though some users find it complex and expensive. Its transparency allows scaling according to business needs. In contrast, SAP Business Warehouse is seen as more costly, especially for smaller businesses, with licensing costs tied to company revenue, making it somewhat opaque. Users report a significant ROI from Snowflake related to operational cost reductions, whereas SAP Business Warehouse incurs high consultancy and maintenance costs.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake

September 2025

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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

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Snowflake

Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

101

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP Business Warehouse is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 17.7%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Snowflake	17.7%
SAP Business Warehouse	2.1%
Other	80.2%

Cloud Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

The solution enables seamless connection, but it is expensive, and the information is one day old

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful. The product provides a seamless connection between the SAP operation system and the data warehouse. It also moves the data from the operating system to the data warehouse in a 3D format. The report generation is easy. It’s a drag-and-drop process. People who want to do a project need not reinvent the wheel. Everything is designed, built, and delivered out of the box. All we have to do is interact with the customers to understand the kind of reports they need and check whether they are already available in the out-of-the-box report. If they are available, we just have to enable them and give the URLs to the customers. The Integration between the SAP operating system and data warehouse is excellent. The UI is good.

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Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Transformation in data querying speed with good migration capabilities

Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses. One key feature is the separation of compute and storage, which eliminates storage limitations. It also has tools for migrating data from legacy databases like Oracle. Its stability and efficiency enhance performance greatly. Tools in the AI/ML marketplace are readily available without needing development.

Read full review

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 aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP."

"The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own."

"Out-of-the-box reports are very useful."

"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."

"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is that it's a seamless integration platform. A valuable feature in the tool is the monitoring alert that makes you aware of what process chain has failed. There's no manual monitoring required if you have configured an alert system, so the process chain can run in the background, and you can get alerts about it. The functionalities I find good in SAP Business Warehouse are alerting and monitoring. If you have configured the tool and have integrated it with SAP Solution Manager, then it's a good product to use."

"With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side."

"The most useful feature has been he ability to feed data into multiple systems in various formats."

"We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution."

More SAP Business Warehouse pros

"Snowflake's most valuable features are data enrichment and flattening."

"The speed of data loading and being able to quickly create the environment are most valuable."

"The technical support is pretty good, particularly if you are a more technical user."

"It is very fast and the performance is great."

"The initial setup is straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation."

"I have found the solution's most valuable features to be storage, flexibility, ease of use, and security."

"Very easy to use and easy to query."

"The snapshot feature is good, the rollback feature is good and the interface is user-friendly."

More Snowflake pros

Cons

"The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases."

"There is room for improvement from a technical perspective."

"The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data."

"It takes more work to get the data, including reporting on that data, because some coding is required, and a significant level of transformation is needed when using SAP Business Warehouse."

"You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy."

"They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading."

"The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance."

"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."

More SAP Business Warehouse cons

"From the documentation, the black box is not very descriptive. Snowflake does not reveal how exactly the data is processed or sourced."

"In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data."

"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."

"It would be helpful if Snowflake could create good reports instead of using Power BI reports."

"This solution could be improved by offering machine learning apps."

"To ensure the proper functioning of Snowflake as an MDS, it relies heavily on other partner tools."

"They have a new console, but I couldn't figure out anything in the new console. So, if I shift to the old console, I can figure out where to create the database schema and other things, but I have no idea where to go in the new console. That's one thing they can improve. I don't know why they created a new console to confuse. The old, classic console is much better."

"I don't think that the AI tools in Snowflake are good."

More Snowflake cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."

"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"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."

"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."

"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."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."

"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."

"There is a licensing for this solution and we purchased an enterprise license. Overall the solution is cost-effective."

"I believe that pricing is reasonable for this solution."

"The solution is expensive but worth the cost because the quality is there."

"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."

"It is pay-as-you-go. Its cost is in the medium range."

"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."

"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."

"Currently, we have a trial account, so we don't need a license. After our project starts, we would need a permanent license."

More Snowflake pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Retailer

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SAP Business Warehouse?

Out-of-the-box reports are very useful.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business Warehouse?

The solution is quite expensive. We paid a yearly subscription fee.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP Business Warehouse?

Over a period, we realized that the license and maintenance costs were quite expensive. Every day, we had to run the background job ODS. Eventually, we moved away from SAP Business Warehouse and bo...

See all answers

What do you like most about Snowflake?

The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?

It is complicated to understand how requests impact warehouse size. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Databricks ( /products/databricks-reviews ), Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Snowflake?

Pricing is quite high for Snowflake Data Cloud, which is an area that could be improved. Snowflake Data Cloud is still beneficial to use, but only if you can afford it. It can be cost-effective if ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Databricks vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 30% of the time

BigQuery vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 23% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs SAP Business Warehouse

Compared 10% of the time

More SAP Business Warehouse Competitors

Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 11% of the time

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 8% of the time

Dremio vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse

September 2025

Download SAP Business Warehouse product report

Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

September 2025

Download Snowflake product report

Also Known As

No data available

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

Reporting, analysis and interpretation of business data are crucial to preserve and enhance the competitive edge of companies by optimizing processes and enabling them to react quickly and in line with market needs. SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) provides tools and functions that enable companies to attain these goals. In SAP BW, you can integrate, transform, and consolidate relevant business information from productive SAP applications and external data sources. SAP BW provides you with a high-performance infrastructure that helps you evaluate and interpret data. Decision makers can make well-founded decisions and identify target-orientated activities on the basis of the analyzed data.

SAP

Snowflake provides a modern data warehousing solution with features designed for seamless integration, scalability, and consumption-based pricing. It handles large datasets efficiently, making it a market leader for businesses migrating to the cloud.

Snowflake offers a flexible architecture that separates storage and compute resources, supporting efficient ETL jobs. Known for scalability and ease of use, it features built-in time zone conversion and robust data sharing capabilities. Its enhanced security, performance, and ability to handle semi-structured data are notable. Users suggest improvements in UI, pricing, on-premises integration, and data science functions, while calling for better transaction performance and machine learning capabilities. Users benefit from effective SQL querying, real-time analytics, and sharing options, supporting comprehensive data analysis with tools like Tableau and Power BI.

What are Snowflake's Key Features?

Scalability: Easily adjusts to handle growing data volumes.
Seamless Integration: Works with a wide range of platforms.
Consumption-Based Costs: Pay only for what you use.
Time Travel: Access historical data effortlessly.
Data Sharing: Secure and efficient sharing of datasets.
Time Zone Conversion: Built-in feature for global operations.
Security: Robust measures to protect sensitive information.
Compute and Storage Separation: Independent scaling for optimal performance.

What Benefits Should You Look for?

Cost Efficiency: Optimized pricing models for minimal waste.
Enhanced Performance: Fast queries and processing times.
Flexibility: Handles both structured and semi-structured data.
Analytics Capabilities: Supports advanced data analysis and reporting.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Snowflake's flexible data warehousing and analytics capabilities facilitate cloud migration, streamline data storage, and allow organizations to consolidate data from multiple sources for advanced insights and AI-driven strategies. Its integration with analytics tools supports comprehensive data analysis and reporting tasks.

Snowflake Computing

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

Buyer's Guide

SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake

September 2025

Free Report: SAP Business Warehouse vs. Snowflake

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