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Snowflake vs Vertica comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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

Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
AI Synthetic Data (3rd)
Vertica
Ranking in Data Warehouse
5th
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Snowflake is 15.2%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vertica is 8.6%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
T Venkatesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Processes query faster through multiple systems simultaneously, but it could support different data types
We use the solution for various tasks, including preparing data marts and generating offers. It helps extract data based on rules from the policy team and provides insights to enhance business operations. We also analyze transactions to target customers and improve business performance The…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Great scalability and near zero maintenance."
"Snowflake has a variety of other ETL provisions that they provide. You can use your own ETL pipeline. Additionally, they provide adapters, and they are always evolving, it is a well-developed solution."
"The feature that is really striking is the ability to translate the SQL workloads into the NoSQL version that can be used by Snowflake."
"It is quite easy to manage."
"Its performance is most valuable. As compared to SQL Server, we are able to see a significant improvement in performance with Snowflake."
"This solution has helped our organization by being easy to maintain and having good technical support."
"A user-friendly and reliable solution."
"The pricing is reasonable and matches the rest of the market."
"It has improved my organization's functionality and performance."
"The feature I like best is performance. We use Red Tool and Red Job for the data warehouse and reporting. It's perfect. Performance is good, and it can return ad hoc queries very quickly. Of course, it's a cluster, so it's easy to scale."
"Vertica is a columnar database, this support our developments in analytics, advanced analytics, and ETL process with large sets of data."
"The most valuable feature is Vertica's performance and the ease of using the database."
"Vertica is a great product because customers can compress and code data. The infrastructure that data warehouse solutions need is a commodity server so that customers don't have to invest in infrastructure."
"The feature of the product that is most important is the speed. I needed a columnar database, and its speed is what it's built to do, and so that's what really does differentiate Vertica from its competitors."
"The solution was executed quite quickly due to its columnar storage underground, which is the most valuable feature of our company"
"Initiate on one node, and the RPM propagates automatically to all other nodes. ​"
 

Cons

"There are some challenges with loading unstructured data and integrating some message queues or brokers. In one project, we had a problem connecting to one of the message queues and we had to take a different route altogether on Microsoft Azure."
"Currently, Snowflake doesn't support unstructured data."
"If we can have a feature where the results can be moved to different tabs, so that I can compare the results with earlier queries before applying the changes, it would be great."
"There is a need for improvements in the documentation, this would allow more people to switch over to this solution."
"Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve. The product is not very cheap, and a reduction in costs would be appreciated."
"I have heard people having difficulty with the machine learning model, so there may be room for improvement."
"There is room for improvement in Snowflake's integration with Python. We do a lot of SQL programming in Snowflake, but we go to a different tool to program when we have to in Python."
"There are a lot of features that they need to come up with. A lot of functions are missing in Snowflake, so we have to find a workaround for those. For example, OUTER APPLY is a basic function in SQL Server, but it is not there in Snowflake. So, you have to write complex code for it."
"One feature, which has really benefited us, is the scalability offered by Vertica as it has enabled Pythian's clients to manage data with agility."
"I believe the installation process could be streamlined."
"Support is an area where it could get better."
"Vertica offers a platform-as-a-service version, but their software-as-a-service solution is only available on AWS. They need to get a SaaS version on Azure and GCP as fast as possible."
"Some of our small to medium-sized customers would like to see containerization and flexibility from the deployment standpoint."
"The documentation of Vertica is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Fact-to-fact joins on multi-billion record tables perform poorly."
"It should provide a GUI interface for data management and tuning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Snowflake licensing is more flexible and it is cheaper than other solutions. I can use it for only 10 days for MVP, or three years, and for flexible models. I can scale up, or down, and the pricing is based on the volume and duration. There are many licensing permutation combinations available."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"Its price should be improved. It should be cheaper than Microsoft."
"Snowflake is a cost-effective solution."
"We used Snowflake to see if it is cheaper than using BigQuery. It was just to maintain the cost or the KPI regarding the cost of connectivity by users. Snowflake wasn't cheaper than BigQuery, and its affordability was the main issue."
"Users have to pay a licensing fee for the solution, which is expensive."
"Pricing can be confusing for customers."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"The pricing depends on the license model because there are several. It depends on the client, but it's cheaper than other solutions. I think it's cheap for all the functionality and robustness. It's not very expensive to deploy."
"Work with a vendor, if possible, and take advantage of more aggressive discounts at mid-fiscal year (April) and fiscal year-end (October).​"
"The pricing and licensing depend on the size of your environment and the zone where you want to implement."
"The price of Vertica is less expensive than some competitors, such as Teradata."
"The solution is free and we pay for the storage."
"It's an expensive product"
"The solution is relatively cost-effective."
"The pricing for this solution is very reasonable compared to other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
40%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Snowflake?
The best thing about Snowflake is its flexibility in changing warehouse sizes or computational power.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
Snowflake's pricing is on the higher side, rated as eight out of ten. If there were ways to reduce costs, it would be a positive improvement.
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Cost reduction is one area I would like Snowflake to improve. The product is not very cheap, and a reduction in costs would be appreciated.
What do you like most about Vertica?
Vertica is easy to use and provides really high performance, stability, and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vertica?
The solution is relatively cost-effective. Pricing and licensing are reasonable compared to other solutions.
What needs improvement with Vertica?
The product could improve by adding support for a wider variety of data types and enhancing features to better compete with other databases.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Snowflake Computing
Micro Focus Vertica, HPE Vertica, HPE Vertica on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Cerner, Game Show Network Game, Guess by Marciano, Supercell, Etsy, Nascar, Empirix, adMarketplace, and Cardlytics.
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake vs. Vertica and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.