Managing cost in Snowflake

Approaching Snowflake cost using the cost management framework described in this topic allows you to manage costs more effectively. Each part of the framework offers powerful features that help minimize total cost of ownership while maximizing the economic value that Snowflake provides.

Cost management framework

Effective Snowflake cost management is divided into three parts: visibility, control, and optimization.

Cost Management Framework

Visibility

Visibility includes understanding the different sources of cost and the ability to explore that cost in detail. Visibility also includes attributing cost to the right entities within your organization and monitoring costs as they accumulate so you can avoid unexpected costs.

Understand:

Gaining visibility into your Snowflake cost begins with understanding the basic concepts of Snowflake cost, including the different usage types that incur cost and the factors that determine the cost of using Snowflake resources. Learn More

Explore:

Once you have a good understanding of how costs accumulate in Snowflake, you are ready to explore your current Snowflake costs. Snowsight provides pre-built dashboards that help you visualize the cost of your Snowflake usage. If you would like to gather more details about your Snowflake cost, you can write custom queries against the Organization Usage and Account Usage schemas, which contain views dedicated to usage and cost. Learn More

Attribute:

The ability to chargeback cost to different entities within your organization clarifies who is incurring costs and for what purpose. This visibility can inform decisions on how to implement cost-saving measures. Learn More

Monitor:

When you have understood and attributed spend on Snowflake, you can implement a monitoring strategy that sends notifications when compute cost is approaching a spending limit. These monitoring features can automatically suspend compute resources, protecting you from overspending on compute resources. Learn More

Control

Snowflake helps you set guardrails and control costs so you never spend more than expected. For example, by setting limits on how long a query can run before it is terminated, you can avoid unexpected costs associated with runaway queries. Learn More

Optimization

To learn how to optimize Snowflake in order to reduce costs and maximize your spend, see Optimizing cost.

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