Exploring compute cost¶
Total compute cost consists of the overall use of:
Virtual warehouses (user-managed compute resources)
Serverless features such as Automatic Clustering and Snowpipe that use Snowflake-managed compute resources
Cloud services layer of the Snowflake architecture
vCPU usage for Openflow BYOC cost and scaling considerations and Openflow Snowflake Deployment cost and scaling considerations. See Openflow components for more information about Openflow components including runtimes.
This topic describes how to gain insight into historical compute costs using Snowsight, or by writing queries against views in the ACCOUNT_USAGE and ORGANIZATION_USAGE schemas. Snowsight allows you to quickly and easily obtain information about cost from a visual dashboard. Queries against the usage views allow you to drill down into cost data and can help generate custom reports and dashboards.
If you need more information about how compute costs are incurred, refer to Understanding compute cost.
Note
The cloud services layer consumes credits, but not all of those credits are actually billed. Usage for cloud services is charged only if the daily consumption of cloud services exceeds 10% of the daily usage of virtual warehouses. Snowsight and a majority of views show the total number of credits consumed by warehouses, serverless features, and cloud services without accounting for this daily adjustment to cloud services.
To determine how many credits were actually billed for compute costs, run queries against the METERING_DAILY_HISTORY view.
Viewing credit usage¶
All compute resources (virtual warehouses, serverless, cloud services) consume Snowflake credits. Users can use Snowsight to view the overall cost of compute usage for any given day, week, or month.
To explore compute cost:
Sign in to Snowsight.
Switch to a role with access to cost and usage data.
In the navigation menu, select Admin » Cost management.
Select a warehouse to use to view the usage data. Snowflake recommends using an XS warehouse for this purpose.
Select Consumption.
Select Compute from the Usage Type drop-down.
For usage notes related to the Consumption page, see Usage notes.
Filter by tag¶
You can use tags to attribute the cost of using resources to a logical unit within your organization. A tag is a Snowflake object that can have one or more values associated with it. A user with the appropriate privileges applies a tag/value pair to each resource that is used by a cost center or other logical unit (e.g. the Development environment, a business unit, or business line). Once resources have been tagged, you can isolate costs based on a specific tag/value pair, allowing you to attribute this cost to a specific logical unit.
To filter the Consumption dashboard to show costs associated with a specific tag/value combination:
Sign in to Snowsight.
Switch to a role with access to cost and usage data.
In the navigation menu, select Admin » Cost management.
Select a warehouse to use to view the usage data. Snowflake recommends using an XS warehouse for this purpose.
Select Consumption.
Select Compute from the Usage Type drop-down.
From the Tags drop-down, select the tag.
Select the value from the list of the tag’s values.
Select Apply.
For example, you can use the drop-down to select the COST_CENTER tag and the SALES value to show usage associated with resources
tagged with COST_CENTER = SALES while excluding all other usage from the dashboard.
You can also display all resources with a tag regardless of their tag value. Use the drop down to select a tag, then choose All instead of a specific value.
View consumption by type, service, or resource¶
When viewing the bar graph that displays compute history, you can filter the data By Type, By Service or By Resource.
- By Type:
Separates resource consumption into compute (virtual warehouses and serverless resources) and cloud services. For the purpose of this filter, cloud services is separated out from the other types of compute resources.
- By Service:
Separates resource consumption into warehouse consumption and consumption by each serverless feature. For example, WAREHOUSE_METERING represents credits consumed by warehouses while PIPE represents credits consumed by the serverless Snowpipe feature. Cloud services compute is included in warehouse consumption.
- By Resource:
Separates resource consumption by the Snowflake object that consumed credits. For example, each warehouse is represented, as is every table that incurred serverless costs.
Querying data for compute cost¶
Snowflake provides two schemas, ORGANIZATION_USAGE and ACCOUNT_USAGE, that contain data related to usage and cost. The ORGANIZATION_USAGE schema provides cost information for all of the accounts in the organization while the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema provides similar information for a single account. Views in these schemas provide granular, analytics-ready usage data to build custom reports or dashboards.
Most views in the ORGANIZATION_USAGE and ACCOUNT_USAGE schemas contain the cost of compute resources in terms of credits consumed. To explore compute cost in currency, rather than credits, write queries against the USAGE_IN_CURRENCY_DAILY view. This view converts credits consumed into cost in currency using the daily price of a credit.
General cost views¶
The following views contain information related to the compute costs of all Snowflake features. You can focus on a particular feature by filtering on the service_type column.
For additional views that focus on the cost of a specific feature, see Feature-specific cost views.
View |
Compute resource |
Description |
Schema |
|---|---|---|---|
METERING_DAILY_HISTORY |
Warehouses Serverless Cloud Services Openflow runtimes |
Credits consumed by all compute resources (warehouses, serverless, cloud services and Openflow) in a given day. Can be used to determine whether cloud services compute costs were actually billed for a specific day (that is, cloud services credit consumption exceeded 10% of warehouse consumption). |
|
METERING_HISTORY |
Warehouses Serverless Cloud Services Openflow runtimes |
Credits consumed by warehouses, cloud services, serverless, and Openflow features on an hourly basis. To see how many credits an individual warehouse is consuming, query the WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY view. |
|
Warehouses Serverless Cloud Services |
Daily credit consumption by all compute resources along with the cost of that usage in the organization’s currency. |
Feature-specific cost views¶
The following views that are dedicated to the usage and cost information for a specific feature.
View |
Compute resource |
Description |
|---|---|---|
APPLICATION_DAILY_USAGE_HISTORY |
Warehouses Serverless Cloud Services |
Daily credit usage for Snowflake Native Apps in an account within the last 365 days. |
ARCHIVE_STORAGE_DATA_ RETRIEVAL_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Bytes retrieved from archive storage for storage lifecycle policies. See Billing for storage lifecycle policies for more information. |
AUTOMATIC_CLUSTERING_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by automatic clustering. |
CATALOG_LINKED_DATABASE_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by catalog-linked databases. |
CORTEX_AI_FUNCTIONS_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Cortex AI Functions. |
CORTEX_AGENT_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Cortex Agents. |
CORTEX_ANALYST_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Cortex Analyst. |
CORTEX_FINE_TUNING_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed for Cortex Fine-tuning. |
CORTEX_FUNCTIONS_ QUERY_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed to run queries that use Cortex LLM functions. |
CORTEX_FUNCTIONS_ DOCUMENT_PROCESSING_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed to process documents with Document AI. |
CORTEX_FUNCTIONS_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed to call Cortex LLM functions. |
CORTEX_REST_API_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Cortex REST API calls. |
CORTEX_SEARCH_DAILY_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Daily credits consumed for Cortex Search for serving and text embeddings |
CORTEX_SEARCH_SERVING_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed for Cortex Search serving |
DATA_QUALITY_MONITORING_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed to call scheduled DMFs and ingest results into an event table. |
DATABASE_REPLICATION_USAGE_ HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed for database replication. |
DOCUMENT_AI_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Document AI. |
HYBRID_TABLE_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed for Hybrid Table Requests resources. (As of March 1, 2026, hybrid table requests are no longer billed, and metering was disabled soon after this pricing change took effect. No new events are recorded in this view.) |
LISTING_AUTO_FULFILLMENT_ REFRESH_DAILY |
Warehouses |
Credits used to refresh data fulfilled to other regions by Cross-Cloud Auto-Fulfillment. |
LISTING_AUTO_FULFILLMENT_ USAGE_HISTORY |
Warehouses |
Estimated usage associated with fulfilling data products to other regions by using Cross-Cloud Auto-Fulfillment. Refer to the SERVICE_TYPE of REPLICATION. |
MATERIALIZED_VIEW_REFRESH_ HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed the refreshing of materialized views. |
OPENFLOW_USAGE_HISTORY |
Openflow |
Credits consumed by Openflow runtimes. This view is available in the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema only. |
PIPE_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Snowpipe. |
QUERY_ACCELERATION_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by the query acceleration service. |
QUERY_ATTRIBUTION_HISTORY |
Warehouses |
Credits consumed per query for warehouse usage. |
REPLICATION_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed and number of bytes transferred during database replication. If possible, use the DATABASE_REPLICATION_USAGE_HISTORY view instead. |
REPLICATION_GROUP_USAGE_ HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed and number of bytes transferred during replication for a specific replication group. |
SEARCH_OPTIMIZATION_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by the search optimization service. |
SERVERLESS_ALERT_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by serverless alerts. |
SERVERLESS_TASK_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by serverless tasks. |
SNOWFLAKE_INTELLIGENCE_USAGE_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Snowflake Intelligence. |
SNOWPIPE_STREAMING_FILE_ MIGRATION_HISTORY |
Serverless |
Credits consumed by Snowpipe Streaming compute (does not include client costs). |
WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY |
Warehouses Cloud Services |
Hourly credit usage of each warehouse, including the cloud services cost associated with using the warehouse. |
Note
The views and table functions of the Snowflake Information Schema also provide usage data related to cost. Though the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema is preferred, the Information Schema can be faster in some circumstances.
Example queries¶
The following queries drill-down into data in ACCOUNT_USAGE views to gain insight into compute costs.
Note
Queries executed against views in the Account Usage schema can be modified to gain insight into cost for the entire organization by using the corresponding view in the Organization Usage schema. For example, both schemas include a WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY view.
Click the name of a query below to see the full SQL example.
- Compute for Warehouses:
- Compute for Cloud Services:
- Compute for Automatic Clustering:
- Compute for Search Optimization:
- Compute for Materialized Views:
- Compute for Query Acceleration Service:
- Compute for Snowpipe:
- Compute and client costs for Snowpipe Streaming:
- Compute for Serverless Alerts:
- Compute for Serverless Tasks:
- Compute for Replication:
- Compute for Partner Tools:
- Compute for Hybrid Tables:
- Compute for Cortex Agents:
- Compute for Cortex Analyst:
- Compute for Cortex Fine-tuning:
- Compute for Cortex functions:
- Compute for Cortex Search:
- Compute for Document AI:
- Compute for Snowflake Intelligence:
- Compute for Snowflake Notebooks:
Compute for warehouses¶
- Query: Average hour-by-hour Snowflake spend (across all warehouses) over the past m days
This query shows the total credit consumption on an hourly basis to help understand consumption trends (peaks, valleys) over the past m days. This helps identify times of day when there are spikes in consumption.
- Query: Credit consumption by warehouse over specific time period
This query shows the total credit consumption for each warehouse over a specific time period. This helps identify warehouses that are consuming more credits than others and specific warehouses that are consuming more credits than anticipated.
- Query: Warehouse usage over m-day average
This query returns the daily average credit consumption grouped by week and warehouse. It can be used to identify anomalies in credit consumption for warehouses across weeks from the past year.
Compute for cloud services¶
- Query: Billed cloud services
Usage for cloud services is billed only if the daily consumption of cloud services exceeds 10% of the daily usage of virtual warehouses. This query returns how much of cloud services consumption was actually billed for a particular day, ordered by the highest billed amount.
- Query: Total cloud services cost by type of query
This query returns the total credits consumed for cloud services by a particular type of query.
- Query: Cloud services cost for queries of a given type
This query returns the total credits consumed for cloud services by all queries of a specific type. Replace
'COPY'if you want to focus on a different type of query anddayif you want to explore a longer or shorter period of time.
- Query: Warehouses with high cloud services usage
This query shows the warehouses that are not using enough warehouse time to cover the cloud services portion of compute. This provides a launching point for additional investigation by isolating warehouses with a high ratio of cloud service use (>10% of overall credits). Investigation candidates include issues around cloning, listing files in S3, partner tools, setting session parameters, etc.
- Query: Cloud services usage sorted by portion of query time
This query returns all queries run within the last minute and sorts them by parts of total query execution time (e.g. compilation time vs. queue time).
Compute for Automatic Clustering¶
- Query: Automatic Clustering cost history (by day, by object)
This query provides a list of tables with Automatic Clustering and the volume of credits consumed via the service over the last 30 days, broken out by day. Any irregularities in the credit consumption or consistently high consumption are flags for additional investigation.
- Query: Automatic Clustering History & m-day average
This query shows the average daily credits consumed by Automatic Clustering grouped by week over the last year. It can help identify anomalies in daily averages over the year so you can investigate spikes or unexpected changes in consumption.
Compute for Search Optimization¶
- Query: Search Optimization cost history (by day, by object)
This query provides a full list of tables with Search Optimization and the volume of credits consumed via the service over the last 30 days, broken out by day. Any irregularities in the credit consumption or consistently high consumption are flags for additional investigation.
- Query: Search Optimization History & m-day average
This query shows the average daily credits consumed by Search Optimization grouped by week over the last year. It can help identify anomalies in daily averages over the year so you can investigate spikes or unexpected changes in consumption.
Compute for Materialized Views¶
- Query: Materialized Views cost history (by day, by object)
This query provides a full list of materialized views and the volume of credits consumed via the service over the last 30 days, broken out by day. Any irregularities in the credit consumption or consistently high consumption are flags for additional investigation.
- Query: Materialized Views History & m-day average
This query shows the average daily credits consumed by materialized views grouped by week over the last year. It can help identify anomalies in daily averages over the year so you can investigate spikes or unexpected changes in consumption.
Compute for Query Acceleration Service¶
- Query: Query Acceleration Service cost by warehouse
This query returns the total number of credits used by each warehouse in your account for the query acceleration service (month-to-date):
Compute for Snowpipe and Snowpipe Streaming¶
- Query: Cumulative usage of data ingest (Snowpipe and “Copy”)
This query returns an aggregated daily summary of all loads for each table in Snowflake showing average file size, total rows, total volume and the ingest method (copy or Snowpipe). If file sizes are too small or big for optimal ingest, additional investigation/optimization may be required. By mapping the volume to credit consumption, it is possible to determine which tables are consuming more credits per TB loaded.
- Query: Snowpipe cost history (by day, by object)
This query provides a full list of pipes and the volume of credits consumed via the service over the last 30 days, broken out by day. Any irregularities in the credit consumption or consistently high consumption are flags for additional investigation.
- Query: Snowpipe History & m-day average
This query shows the average daily credits consumed by Snowpipe grouped by week over the last year. It can help identify anomalies in daily averages over the year so you can investigate spikes or unexpected changes in consumption.
- Query: Total Snowpipe Streaming cost
This query lists the current credit usage for Snowpipe Streaming, including both Snowpipe Streaming compute and client costs.
Compute for serverless alerts¶
- Query: Total serverless alert cost
This query lists the current credit usage for all serverless alerts:
Compute for serverless tasks¶
- Query: Total serverless task cost
This query lists the current credit usage for all serverless tasks:
Compute for replication¶
- Query: Account replication cost
This query lists the credits used by a replication or failover group for account replication in the current month:
- Query: Database replication cost history (by day, by object)
This query provides a full list of replicated databases and the volume of credits consumed via the replication service over the last 30 days, broken out by day. Any irregularities in the credit consumption or consistently high consumption are flags for additional investigation.
- Query: Database replication History & m-day average
This query shows the average daily credits consumed by Replication grouped by week over the last year. This helps identify any anomalies in the daily average so you can investigate any spikes or changes in consumption.
Compute for partner tools¶
- Query: Credit consumption by partner tools
This query identifies which of Snowflake’s partner tools/solutions (e.g. BI, ETL, etc.) are consuming the most credits. This can help identify partner solutions that are consuming more credits than anticipated, which can be a starting point for additional investigation.
Compute for hybrid tables¶
- Query: Credit consumption for hybrid tables over a specific period of time
This query shows the total credit consumption for hybrid tables in your account over a specific period of time. This helps track hybrid table credit usage against expectations.
Note
As of March 1, 2026, Snowflake no longer bills customers for hybrid table requests, and metering was disabled soon after this pricing change took effect. Any new data in the view as of March 1, 2026, will not be billed to customers, and you can still query the historical data in the view.
For information about hybrid table storage costs, see Evaluate cost for hybrid tables.
Compute for Cortex Agents¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex Agents.
This query shows the credit consumption for Cortex Agents.
Compute for Cortex Analyst¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex Analyst.
This query shows the credit consumption for Cortex Analyst.
Compute for Cortex Fine-tuning¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex Fine-tuning.
This query shows the training credit consumption for each Cortex Fine-tuning, aggregated in one hour increments.
Compute for Cortex functions¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex functions.
This query shows the credit consumption for each Cortex function call, aggregated in one hour increments based on function and model.
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex function called with the
mistral-largemodel. This query shows the credit consumption for each Cortex function called with the
mistral-largemodel, aggregated in one hour increments based on function and model.
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex functions query.
This query shows the credit consumption for each Cortex functions query, aggregated in one hour increments based on function and model.
Compute for Cortex REST API¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex REST API.
This query shows the credit consumption for Cortex REST API calls, including the number of tokens processed and the model used for each request.
Compute for Cortex Search¶
- Query: Daily credit consumption by Cortex Search.
This query shows the credit consumption for each Cortex Search Service, aggregated daily, including both serving and embed text token consumption.
- Query: Credit consumption by Cortex Search serving.
This query shows the serving credit consumption for each Cortex Search Service, aggregated in one hour increments.
Compute for Document AI¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Document AI.
This query shows the credit consumption for Document AI.
- Query: Credit consumption per Document AI query.
This query retrieves records from the CORTEX_DOCUMENT_PROCESSING_USAGE_HISTORY view where the CREDITS_USED is greater than 0.072.
Compute for Snowflake Intelligence¶
- Query: Credit consumption by Snowflake Intelligence.
This query shows the credit consumption for Snowflake Intelligence.
Compute for Snowflake Notebooks¶
- Query: Hourly credit consumption by notebook
This query retrieves runtime history for a specific notebook, including credit usage and execution timestamps. Use this data to understand how often and how long a notebook runs, and to identify patterns or spikes in credit consumption by hour.
- Query: Cost to run a specific notebook
This query shows the total credits consumed by a specific notebook. Use this to estimate a notebook’s cost and identify high-cost notebooks.
- Query: Total compute pool cost per notebook
This query shows the total credits consumed by each notebook running on a specific compute pool. Use this to break down compute usage by notebook, which can help identify which notebooks contribute most to the compute pool’s overall cost.
- Query: Identify users who ran a specific notebook
This query returns a list of users who have executed a specific notebook. Use this to understand usage patterns, or identify collaborators and consumers of shared notebooks.