Snowflake: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 8. Managing Snowflake Account Costs

Organizations create business plans and budgets using the most current and accurate information possible. Knowing the amount to budget for an on-premises virtual warehouse is relatively easy because, for the most part, the costs are fixed. A usage-based cost approach, such as Snowflake’s current pricing model, may initially seem intimidating. Indeed, understanding any usage-based cost model requires a clear understanding in advance of how costs are computed and what guardrails can be added to control for greater elasticity so that you don’t experience runaway costs. Snowflake includes tools, such as resource monitors, which allow you to cap actual costs based on your initial plan. Going beyond a basic understanding of usage-based pricing and positioning your organization to take advantage of it can yield many positive results.

One of the greatest benefits of usage-based pricing is that it provides you an opportunity to transparently see and understand how your organization is charged for storing and using data. This often leads to changes that will immediately begin to lower costs. Snowflake’s usage-based billing and Snowflake object tagging make it easy to assign appropriate costs to the appropriate accounts or departments. This means there is more cost accountability for each team and workload. With more accountability at a granular level, there will likely be more consideration about how resources are consumed and, thus, more action ...