Snowflake Setting Up Your Free Trial Account
Snowflake offers a free 30-day trial that gives you $400 in credits. That is enough to run thousands of queries, load gigabytes of data, and explore almost every feature covered in this course. This topic walks you through every step of creating your account, configuring it correctly from the start, and understanding the choices you make during setup.
Setup takes about five minutes. No credit card is required for the trial. You need a valid email address and a modern web browser.
Step 1: Navigate to the Snowflake Trial Page
Open your browser and go to snowflake.com. Click the "Start for Free" button near the top of the page. You land on the trial registration form. Fill in your first name, last name, email address, and company name. For company name, you can use your own name or any placeholder if you are signing up as an individual learner.
Snowflake sends a verification email immediately. Open that email and click the verification link before continuing. The link expires after a few hours, so verify promptly.
Step 2: Choose Your Snowflake Edition
After email verification, Snowflake asks you to choose an edition. The trial automatically starts with Enterprise edition, which is the recommended choice for learners because it includes multi-cluster warehouses, 90-day Time Travel, and data masking policies — features you will encounter in later topics of this course.
TRIAL EDITION COMPARISON
=========================
STANDARD ENTERPRISE (Recommended) BUSINESS CRITICAL
--------- ------------------------ -----------------
30-day trial 30-day trial 30-day trial
$400 credits $400 credits $400 credits
Basic features + Multi-cluster WH + Tri-Secret Secure
1-day Time Travel + 90-day Time Travel + Private Link
+ Data masking + HIPAA compliance
Select Enterprise and click Continue. You can always downgrade to Standard if you want to reduce costs when you move to a paid account later.
Step 3: Choose Your Cloud Provider and Region
This is the most important technical decision during setup. Snowflake runs on three cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Choose the provider that matches your organisation's primary cloud, or choose based on where your data sources live.
For individual learners, AWS is the most common choice because it has the most Snowflake regions globally. If you plan to integrate Snowflake with Google BigQuery or Google Analytics later, choose GCP. If your company uses Microsoft Teams and Azure Active Directory, choose Azure.
Choosing the Right Region
Within your chosen cloud provider, you select a geographic region. Pick the region physically closest to where you or your users are located. Closer regions mean lower query latency and lower data egress costs if you move data between Snowflake and other services.
AWS REGIONS EXAMPLE BEST FOR ------------------- -------- US East (N. Virginia) US East Coast users US West (Oregon) US West Coast users EU (Frankfurt) European users AP Southeast (Singapore) Southeast Asia users AP Northeast (Tokyo) Japan users AZURE REGIONS EXAMPLE BEST FOR --------------------- -------- East US 2 US East Coast (Azure) West Europe European users (Azure) Southeast Asia Asia Pacific (Azure)
For this course, select any US region on AWS if you have no specific requirements. The examples and screenshots in this course use AWS US East.
Step 4: Set Your Username and Password
After choosing your cloud and region, Snowflake asks you to create a username and password. Choose a strong password with at least one uppercase letter, one number, and one special character. Your username becomes your permanent login identifier for this account.
Write down or save these credentials in a password manager immediately. Snowflake does not allow you to recover your username if you forget it — you would need to create a new account.
Step 5: Your Account Is Created — Understanding the Account Identifier
After completing the form, Snowflake creates your account within 30 to 60 seconds. Snowflake sends a second email containing your account identifier — a unique string that looks like this:
ACCOUNT IDENTIFIER FORMAT ========================== Example: xy12345.us-east-1.aws Breakdown: xy12345 = Your unique organisation identifier us-east-1 = The AWS region you selected aws = Your cloud provider Full login URL: https://xy12345.us-east-1.aws.snowflakecomputing.com
Save this identifier. You need it whenever you connect to Snowflake from external tools like Python, dbt, Tableau, or the SnowSQL command-line client. The Snowsight web interface remembers it automatically, but third-party tools require you to enter it manually.
Step 6: Log In to Snowsight for the First Time
Click the login link in your email or navigate directly to your account URL. Enter your username and password. Snowflake logs you into Snowsight — the web-based interface for Snowflake. You see a welcome screen with some sample data already loaded.
Snowflake automatically creates several objects in your new account:
- COMPUTE_WH: A default X-Small virtual warehouse ready to run queries
- SNOWFLAKE_SAMPLE_DATA: A shared database containing sample datasets including TPC-H and TPC-DS benchmark data
- PUBLIC schema: A default schema inside your SNOWFLAKE database where you can immediately create tables
Understanding Your Trial Credit Balance
Your $400 trial credit balance appears in the top-right corner of Snowsight under your account name. Snowflake deducts credits when your virtual warehouse runs queries. The table below shows approximately how long your trial lasts under different usage patterns.
USAGE SCENARIO ESTIMATED TRIAL DURATION --------------------- ------------------------- Light learning (1-2 hrs/day) Full 30 days easily within budget Daily heavy queries (8 hrs/day) ~15 days of active usage Continuous warehouse running 24/7 ~16 days before credits run out WAREHOUSE COST REFERENCE XS Warehouse: 1 credit/hour $400 credits ÷ $2-$3 per credit = ~130-200 hours of XS compute
You protect your trial credits by enabling auto-suspend on your warehouse. Set auto-suspend to 60 seconds. When your warehouse sits idle for 60 seconds, Snowflake suspends it automatically, consuming zero credits until the next query arrives.
Step 7: Configure Auto-Suspend on Your Default Warehouse
This is the most important post-setup step for trial users. Open Snowsight, click the Admin menu in the left sidebar, then click Warehouses. Click on COMPUTE_WH. Set Auto Suspend to 60 seconds. Click Save. Your warehouse now shuts down automatically 60 seconds after it finishes a query.
You can also do this with SQL. Open a new worksheet in Snowsight and run:
ALTER WAREHOUSE COMPUTE_WH SET AUTO_SUSPEND = 60;
Also enable auto-resume so the warehouse restarts automatically when a new query arrives:
ALTER WAREHOUSE COMPUTE_WH SET AUTO_RESUME = TRUE;
With both settings active, your warehouse behaves like a light switch: it turns on when you run a query and turns off 60 seconds after you stop. You never pay for idle time.
Step 8: Verify Your Setup with a Sample Query
Run your first query to confirm everything works. In Snowsight, click Worksheets in the left sidebar, then click the plus icon to open a new worksheet. Type this query and click the Run button:
SELECT CURRENT_USER(), CURRENT_ACCOUNT(), CURRENT_REGION();
Snowflake returns three values: your username, your account identifier, and your current region. If you see those values, your account is fully functional.
Run a second query against the built-in sample data to see real results:
SELECT TOP 10
c_name AS customer_name,
c_acctbal AS account_balance,
n_name AS nation
FROM SNOWFLAKE_SAMPLE_DATA.TPCH_SF1.CUSTOMER
JOIN SNOWFLAKE_SAMPLE_DATA.TPCH_SF1.NATION
ON c_nationkey = n_nationkey
ORDER BY account_balance DESC;
This query returns the top 10 customers by account balance from a sample dataset with 150,000 customers. It runs in under one second on an X-Small warehouse. You just ran your first real Snowflake query.
Account Settings Worth Reviewing
Before diving into course topics, review these account-level settings in the Admin panel. Fixing them now prevents common problems later.
SETTING RECOMMENDED VALUE WHERE TO SET IT ------- ----------------- --------------- Default warehouse COMPUTE_WH Profile > Preferences Default role SYSADMIN Profile > Preferences MFA (Multi-Factor Auth) Enable Profile > Security Network Policy Off for now Admin > Security Email Notifications Enable Profile > Notifications
Understanding Default Roles in a New Account
Your trial account automatically creates several roles. Understanding them prevents permission errors in future topics.
ROLE HIERARCHY IN A NEW ACCOUNT
================================
ACCOUNTADMIN (top level — full control of everything)
|
SYSADMIN (creates and manages databases, warehouses, schemas)
|
USERADMIN (creates and manages users and roles)
|
PUBLIC (base role given to every user automatically)
Your initial user account has the ACCOUNTADMIN role, which means you can do everything. For learning purposes, switch to the SYSADMIN role for day-to-day work. This mirrors real-world best practices where even administrators do not use ACCOUNTADMIN for routine tasks — it exists only for account-level configuration changes.
Switch roles in Snowsight by clicking your username in the bottom-left corner and selecting Switch Role.
Key Points
- The Snowflake free trial lasts 30 days and includes $400 in credits — no credit card required
- Choose Enterprise edition during signup to access multi-cluster warehouses and 90-day Time Travel
- Your cloud provider and region choice determines where your data physically lives — pick the closest region to your users
- Save your account identifier (format: orgname.region.cloud) — you need it for all external tool connections
- Set auto-suspend to 60 seconds and auto-resume to TRUE immediately after account creation to protect your trial credits
- Use SYSADMIN role for routine work; reserve ACCOUNTADMIN for account-level administration only