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Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs Snowflake comparison

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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

Microsoft Analytics Platfor...
Ranking in Data Warehouse
18th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snowflake
Ranking in Data Warehouse
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (1st), AI Synthetic Data (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (4th), AI Software Development (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Microsoft Analytics Platform System is 2.3%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snowflake is 8.9%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Snowflake8.9%
Microsoft Analytics Platform System2.3%
Other88.8%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

MahmoudMohamed1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at Tatweer Educational Technologies Company - TETCO
Offers smooth data integration between systems, but requires better real-time analytics capabilities
We leverage its capabilities for many applications. We can integrate with our databases, like Oracle, MySQL, or any other, using Microsoft Integration Services. This lets us continue using private databases without paying additional licensing fees. Additionally, the license includes Analytics services and Power BI, which work on-premises, unlike most other technologies that require cloud solutions.
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

"We help customers in many ways from customized analysis for detection of anomalies in tax, operations, customer relationship, and marketing campaigns, and we also use mining and ML to help them discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"The Cube Solution is quite different when compared to the rest of the competition and has unique functionality for advanced analytics."
"The most valuable part of the product is that it is a system, with different tools for different services for different kinds of scenarios, making it a very rich, integrated, technology-rich platform whose total integration with the rest of Microsoft products creates flexibility and compatibility and makes the tool a very useful one."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System's most valuable feature is its ecosystems and seamless integration with other Microsoft reporting platforms and databases."
"This is a well-integrated solution and that integration empowers results."
"Helps our customers to discover trends, which provides useful information based on their business."
"I think Microsoft Stack offers the end-to-end solution I need."
"By combining both Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and unstructured Hadoop analytical capabilities in a single, easy-to-manage EDW appliance, Microsoft APS is well positioned to help organizations use information to enhance their competitive position."
"With no effort on our part, we could have a stronger system compared to the effort and cost of doing a similar thing on-premises."
"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."
"I don't think it is difficult to maintain."
"The most valuable feature has been the Snowflake data sharing and dynamic data masking."
"Snowflake's most valuable features are data enrichment and flattening."
"By integrating everything into a single Snowflake platform, we have lowered the total cost of ownership quite a bit."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just need to follow the documentation."
"It is a highly scalable solution. There is no limit on storage or computing."
 

Cons

"On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product overall as a five. This is probably because there is still a lot of room for improvement, features that other products have that are missing, and a lot of open-source technology nowadays that are very good and people can use instead."
"However, centralized EDW tends to be extremely expensive and very inflexible."
"Releases of new products and functionality is never accompanied by associated documentation, training and resources that adequately explain the release."
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities need to be more friendly for beginning users."
"Microsoft Analytics Platform System could have better support."
"The trouble is Microsoft has changed their licensing. It's an extremely expensive product now."
"The flexibility of this solution needs to be improved because you cannot make changes at every one of the different steps."
"The pricing model needs to be improved."
"Every product has room for improvement, although in this case, it needs some broadening of the functionality."
"The addition of more AI capabilities in Snowflake would help us more."
"The scheduling system can definitely be better because we had to use external airflow for that. There should be orchestration for the scheduling system. Snowflake currently does not support machine learning, so it is just storage. They also need some alternatives for SQL Query. There should also be support for Spark in different languages such as Python."
"Snowflake can be improved in terms of its recent switch to a new user interface, which feels less intuitive compared to the old one."
"The product's performance could be improved."
"Snowflake has to improve their spatial components since it doesn't have much in terms of geo-spatial queries."
"It would be better if they had a data profile tool that tells me where the gaps are in my time series data."
"It's difficult to know how to size everything correctly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Microsoft Analytics Platform System a seven out of ten for pricing."
"We are currently paying $200,000 a year for all the different parts of the suite during an ingest model Microsoft now charges us $700,000 a year."
"The initial price is lower than Oracle, but extensive use of SQL may lead to a higher total cost of ownership."
"Users have to pay extra for premium-level technical support."
"The price of Snowflake is quite reasonable."
"The product's price range falls between average to a bit expensive range. I think the tool is worth the money if you use it properly."
"There is a separation of storage and compute, so you only pay for what you use."
"On average, with the number of queries that we run, we pay approximately $200 USD per month."
"The price for the solution's license depends on the use cases."
"Snowflake has consumption-based costs; users only pay for storage and computing."
"Pricing is approximately $US 50 per DB. Terabyte is around $US 50 per month."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Snowflake?
We find the metering and billing experience for Snowflake to be expensive because there are many limitations to what it can do. When we compared performance-wise and cost-wise to Bedrock for some o...
What needs improvement with Snowflake?
Lessons learned about our main use case or how Snowflake performed in those areas include that the sales representatives do not really understand the product, and that the solutions consultants bas...
What is your primary use case for Snowflake?
Our main use case for Snowflake was to ingest data, use it for search, analytics, and data sharing with our customers; however, in reality, those use cases did not work. When it came to our challen...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft APS, MS Analytics Platform System
Snowflake Computing, Snowflake Data Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Transport for London, E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG, Prometeia, Tangerine, SSM Health Care, Service Corporation International
Accordant Media, Adobe, Kixeye Inc., Revana, SOASTA, White Ops
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Analytics Platform System vs. Snowflake and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.