Understanding data transfer cost¶
Data transfer is the process of moving data into (ingress) and out of (egress) Snowflake.
Snowflake charges a per-byte fee for data egress when users transfer data from a Snowflake account into a different region on the same cloud platform or into a completely different cloud platform. Data transfers within the same region are free.
The per-byte rate for transferring data out of a region depends where your Snowflake account is hosted. For data transfer pricing, see the pricing guide.
Note
Snowflake does not charge data ingress fees. However, a cloud storage provider might charge a data egress fee for transferring data from the provider to your Snowflake account.
Contact your cloud storage provider (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure) to determine whether they apply data egress charges to transfer data from their network and region of origin to the cloud provider’s network and region where your Snowflake account is hosted.
Snowflake features that incur transfer costs¶
Snowflake features that transfer data from a Snowflake account into a different region on the same cloud platform or into a completely different cloud platform incur data transfer costs. For example, the following actions incur data transfer costs:
Unloading data - Unloading data from Snowflake to Amazon, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure.
Typically this involves the use of COPY INTO <location> to unload data to cloud storage in a region or cloud platform different from where your Snowflake account is hosted. In addition, unloading data typically involves a stage, with its associated costs.
Replicating Data - Replication of databases, creating a snapshot of the database to a secondary database.
Typically this involves replicating data to a Snowflake account in a region or cloud platform different from where your primary (origin) Snowflake account is hosted. See also Replication Billing.
External network access - Accessing network locations external to Snowflake from procedure or UDF handler code using external access. See also Costs of external network access.
Copy files - Copy files from a source stage to an output stage. For example, with Writing files from Snowpark Python UDFs and UDTFs, you can copy files to an external stage that is on a different region/cloud.
Writing external functions - Use of external functions to transfer data from your Snowflake account to AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Public cloud. See also External Functions Billing.
Cross-Cloud Auto-Fulfillment - Using auto-fulfillment to offer listings to consumers in other cloud regions.
Cross-region/cross-cloud Iceberg writes - When you use Snowflake as the catalog, writing new data into the Iceberg table incurs costs for data transfer usage if the active storage location is in a different region or with another cloud provider. However, data transfers within the same region are free.
Note
Snowflake does not apply data egress charges when a Snowflake client or driver retrieves query results across regions within the same cloud platform or across different cloud platforms.
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