Account Overview¶

Overview¶

The Account Overview page in Snowsight is the starting point for understanding and optimizing the cost of using Snowflake in an account. The page summarizes spend, surfaces unexpected spikes, and recommends ways to save, all in one place, so you don’t have to stitch together multiple dashboards.

Use this page to:

Track this month’s spend against your budget at a glance.
Spot cost trends, untagged warehouses, and your top-spending resources.
Investigate anomalies and act on optimization recommendations.
Ask follow-up questions about anything on the page using Cortex Code.

Open the Account Overview page¶

Sign in to Snowsight.
Switch to a role with access to Account Overview.
In the navigation menu, select Admin » Cost management.
Select the Account Overview tab.

A note at the top of the page reminds you that usage data is not real-time: “Information latency can be up to 72 hours.”

Filters¶

Two filters at the top of the page control what every tile on the page shows. Changing a filter updates all tiles at once.

Date range¶

The Date range filter sets the time period used for every calculation, chart, and comparison on the page. The default is This month.

Available options:

This month (default)
Last month
Last 3 months
Last 6 months
This year

When a tile shows a percent change “versus the previous period,” the previous period is determined by the date range you select. For example, with This month selected, the comparison is to the same number of days last month.

Currency¶

The Currency filter sets the unit used to display costs. The default is credits.

To switch to a fiat currency such as USD, you need additional privileges and must be signed in to the right type of account. See Viewing costs in currency for details.

The currency filter affects the Total Cost, Cost Attribution, Anomalies, and Cost summary tiles.

What’s on the Account Overview page¶

The page is organized into three areas:

Summary cards: A row of headline metrics at the top of the page.
Cost breakdown: Detailed cost trends and attribution.
Alerts and recommendations: Cost anomalies and savings opportunities.

Summary cards¶

A row of four cards at the top of the page gives you a single-glance view of account-wide spend, budget status, and outstanding alerts.

Cost summary¶


Goal	Show total spend for the selected time period and how it compares to the previous comparable period.
Shows	Total cost, percent change versus the previous period, and the month-to-date average daily spend.
Use it to	Quickly answer “How much have we spent this month, and is it trending up or down?”

Monthly budget utilization¶


Goal	Show how much of your account’s monthly budget has been consumed.
Shows	Percentage of budget used, on-track status, and credits spent against budget. Select the tile to open Monitor credit usage with budgets.
Use it to	Catch budget overruns before they happen and confirm spending is on track.
Prerequisites	A monthly budget must be configured for the account. If no budget is configured, the tile displays a prompt to set one up. See Monitor credit usage with budgets.

Anomalies¶


Goal	Surface unexpected spikes in cost without requiring you to investigate.
Shows	A count of anomalies detected in the selected time period, or “No anomalies detected.”
Use it to	Identify cost spikes that fall outside normal patterns so you can investigate the cause.
Key term	An anomaly is a day when consumption falls outside the range expected by Snowflake’s anomaly detection model. See Introduction to cost anomalies.

Optimization insights¶


Goal	Surface concrete ways to reduce credit consumption based on your usage patterns.
Shows	Estimated weekly savings in credits and the number of savings opportunities identified.
Use it to	Find low-effort wins, such as rarely used materialized views or oversized warehouses, that reduce spend.
Key term	An optimization insight is a specific, actionable recommendation generated weekly by Snowflake. See Using Optimization insights to save.

Cost breakdown¶

The Cost breakdown section breaks down spend into trends, attribution, and top spenders.

Total cost¶


Goal	Show how spend changes over time so you can spot trends and outliers.
Shows	A line chart of spend across the selected time period, alongside the period total, percent change versus the prior period, and the month-to-date average daily spend.
Use it to	Identify days, weeks, or events that drove unusual spend.

Group by options (Total cost)¶

Use the Group by menu in the upper-right corner of the tile to break the chart into series. The option you choose changes which lines appear on the chart.

Group by	What you see
Services	One line per Snowflake service that incurred cost, such as Warehouse, AI Services, Replication, Snowpipe Streaming, Serverless Task, Cortex Code CLI, Cortex Code Snowsight, Cortex Code Desktop, Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex Agents, and others. Use this view to see which service is growing the fastest.
Usage type	One line per high-level usage type: Compute, Storage, Data transfer, and AI inference. Use this view to compare compute against storage and data transfer at a glance.

The Cortex Code starter question changes with the Group by selection. For example, with Services selected, the starter is “Which service has grown the fastest over this month?”; with Usage type selected, it becomes “How has my compute vs storage cost changed over this month?”.

Warehouse cost attribution¶


Goal	Show how warehouse spend is attributed using cost attribution tags.
Shows	The percent of warehouse spend covered by the selected tag, along with the change versus the prior period and a breakdown of the contributing values.
Use it to	Improve cost attribution by identifying untagged spend, and see how spend distributes across teams, cost centers, or any other tag dimension.
Key term	A cost attribution tag is any tag applied to a warehouse for the purpose of chargeback. See Attributing cost.

Group by options (Warehouse cost attribution)¶

Use the Group by menu in the upper-right corner of the tile to choose how the attribution is calculated. The view changes based on what you pick.

Group by	What you see
Default (no tag selected)	The percentage of your total credit spend attributed to warehouses with any tag versus those without any tag. Use this view to track tagging coverage at a glance.
A specific tag name (for example, COST_CENTER)	A breakdown of spend by values of the selected tag, such as `finance`, `engineering`, or `product`. A Without selected tag row captures warehouses that may have other tags but are missing the one you grouped by. Use this view to chargeback spend by team, cost center, or any other tag dimension.

Select View more in the upper-right corner of the tile to open the full warehouse cost attribution view.

Top spend by category¶


Goal	Identify the biggest cost drivers in your account.
Shows	A ranked list of your top consumers in one of four categories: warehouses, queries, databases, or tags. Switch categories with the sub-tabs.
Use it to	Focus optimization efforts on the resources that move the needle.

Alerts and recommendations¶

The Alerts and recommendations section surfaces issues and opportunities you might otherwise miss.

Anomalies (detail)¶


Goal	Show recent cost anomalies in detail so you can investigate them.
Shows	A count of anomalies in the selected time period, a freshness label such as “No new since last 24h”, and a table with one row per anomaly.
Use it to	Investigate individual anomalies and decide whether they are explained by known events.
See also	Introduction to cost anomalies for how anomaly detection works.

Each row in the anomalies table shows:

Column	Description
Date	The day on which the anomaly was detected.
Consumption	The actual consumption for that day.
Expected range	The lower and upper bound of consumption that Snowflake’s anomaly detection model predicted for that day.
Over/Under expected	The amount above the upper bound (positive) or below the lower bound (negative). Red text indicates a deviation worth investigating.

Select the + button on any row to open Cortex Code with that anomaly’s context preloaded.

Optimization insights (detail)¶


Goal	List specific optimization opportunities along with their estimated savings.
Shows	Insights with estimated credit savings, such as “Rarely used tables with automatic clustering”, plus a checklist of insight categories that were evaluated.
Use it to	Take action on the opportunities with the highest estimated savings first.
See also	Using Optimization insights to save for the full list of insight types.

Ask follow-up questions with Cortex Code¶

Every tile on the Account Overview page includes a + button with a starter question, such as “What’s behind the cost trend over this month?” or “Which warehouses are untagged?”. Selecting a starter question opens Cortex Code, which uses the context of the current tile to answer.

You can also type your own question. Common follow-ups include:

“Why did spend spike on a particular day?”
“Which roles spent the most this month?”
“Show me the largest untagged warehouses.”

For more about Cortex Code, see Cortex Code.

Note

Cortex Code must be enabled for your account, and your role must have the necessary privileges. If you don’t see the + buttons, see Cortex Code.

View the SQL query behind a tile¶

Every tile on the Account Overview page is populated by a SQL query against views in the ACCOUNT_USAGE or ORGANIZATION_USAGE schemas. You can inspect the exact query a tile runs so you can reuse it in a worksheet, adapt it for a custom report, or learn how the metric is calculated.

To view the SQL query for a tile, select the View SQL query icon () in the upper-right corner of the tile. The query opens in a worksheet, where you can run it, modify it, or save it.

For example, the Top spend by category tile (with the Warehouse sub-tab) queries the WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY view in the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema of the shared SNOWFLAKE database.

Note

The role you use to run the query must have the same privileges that the tile requires. See Access control for the privileges required by each tile.

Access control¶

Each section of the Account Overview page has different privilege requirements. The page itself requires a baseline set of roles, and individual tiles may require additional privileges.

For general information about cost management access control, see Access control for cost management.

Accessing the Account Overview page¶

To view the Account Overview page, you must use a role that has access to account usage data. Without sufficient privileges, the page displays the message “No access to account overview.”

Use one of the following roles:

The ACCOUNTADMIN system-defined role (for regular accounts and ORGADMIN-enabled accounts).
The GLOBALORGADMIN system-defined role (for organization accounts).
A role that has been granted the APP_USAGE_VIEWER application role and the USAGE_VIEWER database role.
A role that has been granted the APP_USAGE_ADMIN application role and the USAGE_ADMIN database role.

For information about granting these roles, see Granting access to other users.

Note

If a role has IMPORTED PRIVILEGES on the SNOWFLAKE database or the USAGE_VIEWER database role but doesn’t have the APP_USAGE_VIEWER application role, the page displays but some tiles aren’t available. Snowflake recommends granting both the application role and the database role together for full access.

Viewing costs in currency¶

By default, tiles that display costs show values in credits. To view costs in a currency, you need additional privileges and must be signed in to the right type of account.

To view costs in currency:

You must be signed in to the organization account or an ORGADMIN-enabled account.
Your role must also be granted one of the following roles:
- ORGANIZATION_BILLING_VIEWER, if you’re signed in to the organization account.
- APP_ORGANIZATION_BILLING_VIEWER, if you’re signed in to an ORGADMIN-enabled account.

Note

The ACCOUNTADMIN and GLOBALORGADMIN roles also have the privileges required to view costs in currency.

Currency display affects the Total Cost, Cost Attribution, and Anomalies tiles.

For more information, see Viewing a currency as the unit of measure.

Tile-level privileges¶

Total Cost tile¶

The Total Cost tile displays spending trends over a selected time range. This tile requires page access privileges.

To view costs in a currency instead of credits, you also need currency display privileges.

Cost Attribution tile¶

The Cost Attribution tile shows a breakdown of costs by attribution tags. This tile requires page access privileges.

Top Spend tile¶

The Top Spend tile identifies the highest-cost resources in your account. It has sub-tabs for warehouses, queries, databases, and tags. This tile requires page access privileges.

Anomalies tile¶

For information about the privileges required for the Anomalies tile, see Access control for cost anomalies.

Optimization insights tile¶

The Optimization insights tile requires the same application roles as Account Overview itself: APP_USAGE_VIEWER (to view insights) or APP_USAGE_ADMIN (to view insights and configure cost anomalies and budgets). See Accessing the Account Overview page for the grant examples.

Note

Having only the USAGE_VIEWER database role (without the APP_USAGE_VIEWER application role) isn’t sufficient for viewing Optimization insights. The APP_USAGE_VIEWER application role includes the internal COST_INSIGHTS_USER role that Optimization insights require.

Granting access to Account Overview¶

The following examples show how to grant different levels of access to the Account Overview page.

Grant basic view access (without currency display)¶

To grant a user view access to the Account Overview page without currency display, grant the APP_USAGE_VIEWER application role and the USAGE_VIEWER database role. For example, to grant view access to user joe:

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN; -- Or GLOBALORGADMIN for organization accounts

CREATE ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT APPLICATION ROLE SNOWFLAKE.APP_USAGE_VIEWER TO ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.USAGE_VIEWER TO ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT ROLE account_overview_viewer TO USER joe;

Grant view access with currency display¶

To allow a user to view costs in a currency, grant the ORGANIZATION_BILLING_VIEWER role in addition to the viewer roles. The user must be signed in to the organization account. For example, to grant view access with currency display to user ralph:

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN; -- Or GLOBALORGADMIN for organization accounts

CREATE ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT APPLICATION ROLE SNOWFLAKE.APP_USAGE_VIEWER TO ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.USAGE_VIEWER TO ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT APPLICATION ROLE SNOWFLAKE.ORGANIZATION_BILLING_VIEWER TO ROLE account_overview_viewer;
-- For ORGADMIN-enabled accounts, use APP_ORGANIZATION_BILLING_VIEWER instead:
-- GRANT APPLICATION ROLE SNOWFLAKE.APP_ORGANIZATION_BILLING_VIEWER TO ROLE account_overview_viewer;
GRANT ROLE account_overview_viewer TO USER ralph;

Grant administrator access¶

To grant a user administrator access, which includes the ability to configure cost anomalies and budgets, grant the APP_USAGE_ADMIN application role and the USAGE_ADMIN database role. For example, to grant administrator access to user judy:

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;

CREATE ROLE account_overview_admin;
GRANT APPLICATION ROLE SNOWFLAKE.APP_USAGE_ADMIN TO ROLE account_overview_admin;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.USAGE_ADMIN TO ROLE account_overview_admin;
GRANT ROLE account_overview_admin TO USER judy;