# Snowflake Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/snowflake/ 15 people recommended Snowflake in Hacker News comments, 10 had mixed feelings and 21 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 12 months, in 13 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended, mainly for high cost and lock-in; those who recommend it cite fast SQL analytics, a polished interface, and clusters that start in seconds without setup. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Expensive, costs can balloon (5 comments in the sample): "I just don't find Snowflake or Redshift anywhere close to what they're selling." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694928)) "burning $5k/mo on distributed compute clusters to process <10GB of daily logs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667098)) "burns a fortune on snowflake every month but no one is using it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46671940)) - Lock-in and hard to export data (3 comments in the sample): "I would rather have my data on something like Parquet/Iceberg (which Snowflake fully supports… than in the table format Snowflake has." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820788)) "The trap you end up in is you have to pay snowflake to access your data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45817365)) "the most expensive ecosystems are often the ones with the most lock-in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105589)) - Weak fit beyond offline analytics (2 comments in the sample): "try to pattern match their understanding of OLTP databases when using OLAP databases like Redshift and Snowflake and it being a complete disaster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908765)) "Snowflake doesn't have adaptive indexes, and its performance would be significantly degraded as data grows" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740541)) - Complex permissions system (2 comments in the sample): "The permission policies that you can define can become very complex" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50213255)) "complex (and scary) permissions system built on top of Snowflake" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600360)) ## Why people recommend it - Polished UI and fast SQL (4 comments in the sample): "Snowflake, which imo has nicer UI/UX and snappier SQL execution, but the trade off is that Snowflake has a bit more lock-in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292489)) "I like Snowflake because for every query in its UI, it automatically profiles the results it returns." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221342)) "Snowflake and Databricks are printing money by making it a more user friendly experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48086968)) - Rich built-in features and ecosystem (4 comments in the sample): "All pruning techniques in Snowflake work equally well both on their proprietary format as well for Iceberg tables." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45833151)) "H3 functions are built directly into Snowflake DB for example" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45811894)) "Just pay snowflake for the amazing DB and ecosystem it is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816816)) - Clusters spin up in seconds (2 comments in the sample): "what snowflake offers is a fleet of servers that can build your cluster in a second as opposed to minutes that you need if you…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928808)) "With snowflake I alone could provide an entire production ready bi stack to a company." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820758)) - Saved money and simplified setup (2 comments in the sample): "allows you the benefit of Snowflake without paying the cost for certain workloads (which really adds up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821140)) "We switched to Snowflake, saved money, got better performance, and had a simpler setup." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48084671)) ## Other cloud data warehouses people recommend - [Google BigQuery](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bigquery/): 19 recommend, 4 mixed, 6 criticize - [Apache DataFusion](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-datafusion/): 16 recommend, 1 mixed, 2 criticize - [Amazon Athena](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-athena/): 8 recommend, 5 mixed, 5 criticize ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.snowflake.com/en/) ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Snowflake", https://hackerapproved.com/p/snowflake/ (15 recommend, 10 mixed, 21 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.