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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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities, as you can get different structures of data to suit your needs."
"SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution."
"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."
"I like that it integrates to open-source."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is its ability to feed data into new, multiple systems in various formats. It can open its data to any system over gateway services or a portal or application that needs to consume and analyze data."
"What I like most about SAP Business Warehouse is its ability to feed data into new, multiple systems in various formats."
"The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The most useful feature is definitely the speed."
"The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power."
"The Mbps they have established is quite a bit faster than any other data warehouse."
"The most valuable features are sharing data, Time Travel, Zero Copy Cloning, performance, and speed."
"I like the ability to work with a managed service on the cloud and that is easy to start with."
"It is quite easy to manage."
"The most valuable features are the clustering, LS50, being able to change the size, the pay per use feature, the flexibility with many different sources and analytic applications."
"Snowflake helped us to improve query performance as the data was growing."
"It helped us to build MVP (minimum viable product) for our idea of building a data warehouse model for small businesses."
 

Cons

"I would like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools."
"I would for sure like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users."
"People are getting frustrated as they have to spend lots of time - 10 minutes to 15 minutes - generating the report."
"Integration with SAP Business Warehouse's ETL tools is not straightforward."
"More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful."
"The big minuses are its not being user friendly."
"What I'd like improved in SAP Business Warehouse is its setup. It could be more flexible, and it could be a configuration-based setup."
"Snowflake needs to improve its programming part. Though the tool has Snowpath, it doesn’t support all features like its competitor, Databricks. Snowflake doesn’t support external data ingestion capabilities. You need to have third-party tools for that. Also, the tool needs to incorporate data integration features in its future releases."
"The data sharing capabilities across business units within the organization should be better."
"I would like to see a client version of the GUI."
"The solution could improve by allowing non-structured data, such as PDFs, images, or videos. We cannot see the data."
"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."
"In future releases, it can also support full unstructured data."
"They should improve the reporting tools."
"Every product has room for improvement, although in this case, it needs some broadening of the functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for SAP Business Warehouse is paid yearly, and there's no extra cost in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive."
"I would not recommend it to small-scale companies. The price is too much."
"SAP Business Warehouse licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"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."
"It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it."
"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 price of Snowflake is very reasonable."
"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."
"It's expensive."
"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."
"On average, with the number of queries that we run, we pay approximately $200 USD per month."
"It is pay-as-you-go. Its cost is in the medium range."
"Currently, we have a trial account, so we don't need a license. After our project starts, we would need a permanent license."
"Snowflake is a cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
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 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?
I am not the person who manages pricing, setup cost, and licensing. Our team is not limited in pricing. The only experience we have had in terms of running and reprocessing a large number of histor...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Snowflake can be improved in terms of its recent switch to a new user interface, which feels less intuitive compared to the old one. Moving to this new interface is something that I would like to s...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake?
My main use case for Snowflake is building ETL pipelines and ad-hoc analytics on data that we have. A specific example of a pipeline and ad-hoc analytics task I have worked on using Snowflake invol...
 

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.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.