SAP IQ vs Snowflake comparison

SAP and Snowflake Computing are both solutions in the Data Warehouse category. SAP is ranked #15 with an average rating of 6.8, while Snowflake Computing is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. SAP holds a 2.8% mindshare in Data Warehouse, compared to Snowflake Computing’s 10.1% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of SAP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Snowflake Computing users who would recommend it.

SAP IQ

Read 23 SAP IQ reviews

1,592 Views
764 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Snowflake

Read 103 Snowflake reviews

9,139 Views
3,564 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

SAP IQ

Snowflake

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

SAP IQ and Snowflake compete in the BI/Analytics and data warehousing markets. Snowflake seems to have the upper hand due to its managed services, scalability, and customer service.

Features: SAP IQ offers exceptional query speed, data compression, and a robust column-based architecture that enhances its efficiency in BI/Analytics tasks. It also provides fast loading and flexible schema design. Snowflake provides a complete managed service with robust scalability, zero administration, and multi-formatted accessibility. It supports massive parallel processing and dynamic scaling, allowing for flexible data processing.

Room for Improvement: SAP IQ faces challenges with limited documentation, real-time capabilities, and costly backup systems. It also lacks integration with modern tools. Snowflake is criticized for costly pricing, lack of built-in ETL/AI functionalities, and a user interface that could be more intuitive. Users also report issues with stored procedures, API limitations, and cost transparency.

Ease Of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP IQ's on-premises deployment limits its flexibility compared to Snowflake's cloud support. SAP IQ users report dissatisfaction with customer service due to limited expert availability and slow response times. Snowflake excels with global support across time zones, offering reliable customer service that enhances user experience.

Pricing and ROI: SAP IQ's pricing is reasonable, offering savings on hardware and flexible licensing but requiring careful negotiation of add-ons. Snowflake's pay-as-you-go model provides flexibility but is considered expensive. Its pricing strategy is transparent, though users desire better cost predictability and clarity on usage impacts.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP IQ vs. Snowflake Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ vs. Snowflake

January 2026

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.2

SAP IQ boasts high ROI with substantial hardware savings, low maintenance costs, though some users lack authorization to confirm it.

Sentiment score

6.2

Users find Snowflake challenging for ROI calculation, but it offers productivity gains, cost reduction, and valuable insights.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

5.6

Customer service is 24/7 but varies in quality; technical support lacks experts, causing slow escalation and limited advanced assistance.

Sentiment score

5.7

Snowflake customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though improvements in timeliness and service-level agreements are suggested.

It seems very difficult to get proper advanced assistance on advanced or complicated problems.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The quality of support from SAP is very good; if it's a known problem, they will have a knowledge base, so we will get immediate assistance.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

I received great support in migrating data to Snowflake, with quick responses and innovative solutions.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

I am satisfied with the work of technical support from Snowflake; they are responsive and helpful.

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

The technical support from Snowflake is very good, nice, and efficient.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.4

SAP IQ offers scalable solutions with Simplex and Multiplex architectures, accommodating vast data volumes across PCs or servers.

Sentiment score

7.7

Snowflake offers seamless, flexible scalability for storage and computing, supporting diverse business needs with automatic cloud-based infrastructure scaling.

SAP IQ is actually quite effective when it comes to scalability.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We can span the read and write load into multiple nodes, and that scalability is there.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Snowflake is very scalable and has a dedicated team constantly improving the product.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

The billing doubles with size increase, but processing does not necessarily speed up accordingly.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Recently, Snowflake has introduced streaming capabilities, real-time and dynamic tables, along with various connectors.

reviewer2403603

Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.0

SAP IQ is stable, effectively managing complex transactions despite occasional issues, making it a reliable choice for implementations.

Sentiment score

8.2

Snowflake offers reliable, fast performance and high stability, with users praising its dependability and minimal disruptions.

It's usually something external, such as lack of disk space or problems arising from the integration to other systems.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Snowflake is very stable, especially when used with AWS.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Snowflake as a SaaS offering means that maintenance isn't an issue for me.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Room For Improvement

SAP IQ faces challenges with high costs, inadequate training, stability issues, and integration limitations, impacting performance and adoption.

Snowflake needs better UI, analytics, integration, documentation, governance, AI features, and cost management solutions to address user concerns.

When there is an issue, the error messaging we get is not always sufficient to do a fast and solid fix.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Enhancements in user experience for data observability and quality checks would be beneficial, as these tasks currently require SQL coding, which might be challenging for some users.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

What things you are going with to ask the support and how we manage the relationship matters a lot.

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

If more connectors were brought in and more visibility features were added, particularly around cost tracking in the FinOps area, it would be beneficial.

reviewer2403603

Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Setup Cost

SAP IQ is cost-effective with various licensing models, though price understanding and negotiation are essential for optimal implementation.

Snowflake's pricing model offers affordability and flexibility but challenges with cost predictability and potential high processing fees.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Snowflake lacks transparency in estimating resource usage.

reviewer1438647

Data Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Valuable Features

SAP IQ features column-based architecture, high compression, rapid queries, large-scale data handling, and integration with SAP BusinessObjects.

Snowflake is scalable and flexible with features like zero-copy cloning, time travel, and integrated security, enhancing efficiency and accessibility.

The feature I appreciate the most about SAP IQ is the compression, which is very good; we cannot compare with any other type of EDW.

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable feature of SAP IQ for us is that it works very effectively with the SAP BusinessObjects which we use it with.

Reviewer302462

Tech Director at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP IQ report

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.

SunilPatil1

Asset Builder at Genpact - Headstrong

I have used the Snowflake Zero-Copy Cloning feature in the past while prototyping data in lower environments. This feature is helpful as it saves a lot of time during the data replication process.

reviewer2403603

Senior Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Snowflake is a data lake on the cloud where all processing happens in memory, resulting in very fast query responses.

Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

For more quotes and insights, download the Snowflake report

Categories and Ranking

SAP IQ

Ranking in Data Warehouse

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (24th)

Snowflake

Ranking in Data Warehouse

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (2nd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (7th), AI Software Development (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of SAP IQ is 2.8%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 10.1%, down from 14.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Snowflake	10.1%
SAP IQ	2.8%
Other	87.1%

Data Warehouse

Featured Reviews

Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Compression performance gets high marks but user-friendly interface needs improvement

The downside of SAP IQ, from what I understood from the management side, is that the front end for the DBA, for the admin, is not that user-friendly. If you compare it with SQL Server Management Studio, it is not that user-friendly GUI for the admin. But the engine is very strong and powerful. It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy. The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup, those software integrated backups are not available. So, if you want to take a backup, you need to take it locally, and then only you can back it up to any storage or anything. Those features such as integrated backup, which would allow it to stripe into an appliance or something similar, are not present. One thing I notice as a downside is that if the CPU utilization is very high, there is no direct way we can find out which query is taking the most CPU. In any other RDBMS, there are DMVs available to find out which query is taking most of the CPU, but those features are not present in SAP IQ. If our CPU is hitting at 100%, it is not easy to identify which connection is taking the most CPU.

Read full review

SunilPatil1

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.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

35%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	58

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?

IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP IQ?

When it comes to SAP IQ, the areas that could be improved or enhanced include the error messaging and the locking capabilities, as that's where we often encounter problems. When there is an issue, ...

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What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?

Our usual use cases for SAP IQ is that we have a Software-as-a-Service architecture where this database is the foundation for our SAP BusinessObjects platform. This is where it's getting its data f...

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What do you like most about Snowflake?

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

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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 ...

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What needs improvement with Snowflake?

Snowflake is currently stable, but it can be improved further. They have a couple of information schemas that can track account usage. If more connectors were brought in and more visibility feature...

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs SAP IQ

Compared 10% of the time

SAP HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Database vs SAP IQ

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BW4HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 5% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs SAP IQ

Compared 5% of the time

More SAP IQ Competitors

Teradata vs Snowflake

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs Snowflake

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Data Factory vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon Redshift vs Snowflake

Compared 6% of the time

Dremio vs Snowflake

Compared 5% of the time

More Snowflake Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ

January 2026

Download SAP IQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Snowflake

January 2026

Download Snowflake product report

Also Known As

Sybase IQ

Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud

Overview

SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

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

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.

Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ vs. Snowflake

January 2026

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Find out what your peers are saying about SAP IQ vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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