Snowflake Credits and Billing

Snowflake bills for what you use. No servers sit idle on your invoice, and no upfront hardware purchase exists. That flexibility rewards teams who understand the meter. A clear picture of credits, storage, and data transfer prevents bill surprises and guides smart design choices.

The Taxi Meter Comparison

A taxi charges for distance and waiting time. The meter stops when the passenger leaves. Snowflake compute follows the same logic. A virtual warehouse consumes credits while it runs and stops consuming when it suspends. A credit is the unit on that meter.

The Three Cost Buckets

WHERE THE MONEY GOES
====================

 +-----------------------+  +-----------------------+  +----------------------+
 |       COMPUTE         |  |       STORAGE         |  |    DATA TRANSFER     |
 |-----------------------|  |-----------------------|  |----------------------|
 | Virtual warehouses    |  | Table data            |  | Data leaving a cloud |
 | Serverless features   |  | Time Travel history   |  | or region            |
 | Cloud services layer  |  | Fail-safe copies      |  | Loading in is free   |
 | Billed in CREDITS     |  | Stage files           |  |                      |
 |                       |  | Billed per TB / month |  | Billed per TB        |
 +-----------------------+  +-----------------------+  +----------------------+

Compute: Warehouse Credits

Each warehouse size burns a fixed number of credits per hour. Billing runs per second after a 60-second minimum each time a warehouse starts.

SIZE       CREDITS PER HOUR
---------  ----------------
X-Small    1
Small      2
Medium     4
Large      8
X-Large    16
2X-Large   32

COST FORMULA
  credits = credits per hour x hours running
  dollars = credits x price per credit

EXAMPLE
  Medium warehouse (4 credits/hour) runs 2.5 hours
  4 x 2.5 = 10 credits

Price per credit depends on edition, cloud provider, region, and contract type. The Snowflake pricing page and the sales contract state the exact rate.

Compute: Serverless Features

Some features run on Snowflake-managed compute outside your warehouse. Snowpipe, automatic clustering, search optimization, materialized view maintenance, serverless tasks, and replication belong here. Each bills credits based on work performed.

Compute: Cloud Services

The cloud services layer handles authentication, query planning, and metadata. Snowflake waives cloud services charges up to 10 percent of daily warehouse credits. Normal workloads rarely pass that threshold. Heavy use of metadata commands or thousands of tiny queries can exceed it.

Storage

Snowflake bills storage as a flat monthly rate per terabyte of compressed data. Compression often shrinks raw data by a large margin. Time Travel and Fail-safe history add to the total, and diverged clones add to it that diverge from their sources.

SELECT table_catalog, table_schema, table_name,
       ROUND(active_bytes / POWER(1024,3), 2)       AS active_gb,
       ROUND(time_travel_bytes / POWER(1024,3), 2)  AS time_travel_gb,
       ROUND(failsafe_bytes / POWER(1024,3), 2)     AS failsafe_gb
FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.TABLE_STORAGE_METRICS
WHERE deleted = FALSE
ORDER BY active_bytes DESC
LIMIT 10;

Data Transfer

Loading data into Snowflake costs nothing for transfer. Moving data out to another cloud or region incurs egress fees from the cloud provider. Cross-region replication and unloading to external storage in another region trigger these fees.

Payment Models

MODEL        HOW IT WORKS                              GOOD FOR
-----------  ----------------------------------------  --------------------
On-demand    Pay for usage at the end of each month    Learning, small teams
Capacity     Pre-purchase credits at a lower rate      Steady, predictable use

Reading Your Own Usage

-- Credits per warehouse over the last 30 days
SELECT warehouse_name,
       ROUND(SUM(credits_used), 2) AS credits
FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY
WHERE start_time >= DATEADD('day', -30, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP())
GROUP BY warehouse_name
ORDER BY credits DESC;

-- Daily credit use across the whole account
SELECT usage_date, SUM(credits_used) AS credits
FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.METERING_DAILY_HISTORY
GROUP BY usage_date
ORDER BY usage_date DESC
LIMIT 30;

A Practical Scenario

A startup notices that its monthly bill doubled. The finance lead queries the metering history and finds a Large warehouse running all night for a report that nobody reads before morning. The team switches the warehouse to a Small size, sets auto-suspend to sixty seconds, and schedules the report during working hours. Following month's bill falls back to the old level, and the finance lead adds a weekly credit check to the team routine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a suspended warehouse cost anything?

A suspended warehouse consumes no compute credits. Stored data continues to bill at the storage rate.

Does a failed query cost credits?

A query that runs on a warehouse consumes credits for the time the warehouse runs, even when the query ends with an error.

Key Points

  • Costs fall into compute, storage, and data transfer.
  • Compute bills in credits; a larger warehouse burns more credits per hour.
  • Warehouses bill per second after a 60-second minimum on each start.
  • Serverless features and cloud services consume credits too.
  • Storage bills per compressed terabyte, including history and diverged clones.
  • Account Usage views show exactly where credits go.
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