Azure Databricks vs. Snowflake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Databricks
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Azure Databricks is a service available on Microsoft's Azure platform and suite of products. It provides the latest versions of Apache Spark so users can integrate with open source libraries, or spin up clusters and build in a fully managed Apache Spark environment with the global scale and availability of Azure. Clusters are set up, configured, and fine-tuned to ensure reliability and performance without the need for monitoring. The solution includes autoscaling and auto-termination to improve…N/A
Snowflake
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform is the eponymous data warehouse with, from the company in San Mateo, a cloud and SQL based DW that aims to allow users to unify, integrate, analyze, and share previously siloed data in secure, governed, and compliant ways. With it, users can securely access the Data Cloud to share live data with customers and business partners, and connect with other organizations doing business as data consumers, data providers, and data service providers.N/A
Pricing
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Platform Connectivity
Comparison of Platform Connectivity features of Product A and Product B
Azure Databricks
9.7
1 Ratings
14% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Connect to Multiple Data Sources10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Extend Existing Data Sources9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic Data Format Detection10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Exploration
Comparison of Data Exploration features of Product A and Product B
Azure Databricks
4.0
1 Ratings
71% below category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Visualization4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Interactive Data Analysis4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Preparation
Comparison of Data Preparation features of Product A and Product B
Azure Databricks
8.5
1 Ratings
3% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Interactive Data Cleaning and Enrichment7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Transformations8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Encryption10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Built-in Processors9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Data Modeling
Comparison of Platform Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
Azure Databricks
9.0
1 Ratings
6% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Multiple Model Development Languages and Tools10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Machine Learning8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Single platform for multiple model development9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Service Model Delivery9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Model Deployment
Comparison of Model Deployment features of Product A and Product B
Azure Databricks
9.0
1 Ratings
5% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Flexible Model Publishing Options8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Security, Governance, and Cost Controls10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mathematica
Mathematica
Score 8.2 out of 10
Db2
Db2
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
Db2
Db2
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(2 ratings)
9.3
(37 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(13 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(8 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure DatabricksSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Having access to all databases and tables in one place is what has helped me and my team to function better. The in built functionality/access to SQL and Python is definitely an added bonus! The icing on the cake is the ability to export your data into an Excel spreadsheet for additional analysis. If you have less to no working knowledge of SQL or Python, its better to look at alternatives.
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Snowflake Computing
I am over our HR data, and we use Workday for our HR management system. I have a script in place that runs reports on Workday and saves the results as CSVs. I can then use stages in Snowflake to insert these CSVs into Snowflake, then I can insert or truncate and replace these staged tables into a final schema. Then once these are in a schema I can reference them and build out my data models. In addition to ingesting CSVs, Snowflake has the ability to write a CSV file to our Amazon S3 bucket. Ingesting these CSVs, transforming the data, then delivering it to a destination would've involved so much more coding than my current process if we were on any other platform.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Consistently great performance when dealing with huge scale data with the help of spark architecture
  • Magic commands such as spark sql, pyspark, scala . This comes really handy in day to day work
  • Integration with other Azure services is super smooth and robust
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
  • Snowflake scales appropriately allowing you to manage expense for peak and off peak times for pulling and data retrieval and data centric processing jobs
  • Snowflake offers a marketplace solution that allows you to sell and subscribe to different data sources
  • Snowflake manages concurrency better in our trials than other premium competitors
  • Snowflake has little to no setup and ramp up time
  • Snowflake offers online training for various employee types
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Intuitive interface
  • Ease of use
  • Providing FAQ or QRGs
Read full review
Snowflake Computing
  • This tool is very much technical and proper knowledge is required, so mostly you have to hire an IT team.
  • I wish if various videos could be available for basic quires like its initiation, then I think it would act as a guideline and would help the beginners a lot.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Snowflake Computing
SnowFlake is very cost effective and we also like the fact we can stop, start and spin up additional processing engines as we need to. We also like the fact that it's easy to connect our SQL IDEs to Snowflake and write our queries in the environment that we are used to
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Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Snowflake Computing
The interface is similar to other SQL query systems I've used and is fairly easy to use. My only complaint is the syntax issues. Another thing is that the error messages are not always the easiest thing to understand, especially when you incorporate temp tables. Some of that is to be expected with any new database.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Snowflake Computing
We have had terrific experiences with Snowflake support. They have drilled into queries and given us tremendous detail and helpful answers. In one case they even figured out how a particular product was interacting with Snowflake, via its queries, and gave us detail to go back to that product's vendor because the Snowflake support team identified a fault in its operation. We got it solved without lots of back-and-forth or finger-pointing because the Snowflake team gave such detailed information.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Snowflake Computing
I have had the experience of using one more database management system at my previous workplace. What Snowflake provides is better user-friendly consoles, suggestions while writing a query, ease of access to connect to various BI platforms to analyze, [and a] more robust system to store a large amount of data. All these functionalities give the better edge to Snowflake.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Helped reduce time for collecting data
  • Reduced cost in maintaining multiple data sources
  • Access for multiple users and management of users/data in a single platform
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Snowflake Computing
  • Positive impact: we use Snowflake to track our subscription and payment charges, which we use for internal and investor reporting
  • Positive impact: 3 times faster query speed compared to Treasure Data means that answers to stakeholders can be delivered quicker by analysts
  • Positive impact: recommender systems now source their data from Snowflake rather than Spark clusters, improving development speed, and no longer require maintainence of Spark clusters.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Snowflake Screenshots

Screenshot of Snowflake Installation