What Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift Actually Are (And Which One You Need)

What Is a Cloud Data Warehouse?

A cloud data warehouse is a database designed to hold all of your company's data in one place and let you run reports and analyses on it quickly. Unlike the database that powers your app or website (which is optimized for speed when reading and writing one record at a time), a data warehouse is optimized for analyzing millions of records at once.

Think of it as the central hub where data from all your tools — Stripe, HubSpot, Shopify, QuickBooks, Google Ads — gets combined so you can ask questions that span across systems.

Three platforms dominate this space: Snowflake, Google BigQuery, and Amazon Redshift.

Snowflake

What it is: An independent data warehouse platform that runs on top of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Founded in 2012, IPO'd in 2020, and has become the default choice for many modern data teams.

How pricing works: You pay separately for storage and compute. Storage is cheap (roughly $23-$40 per TB per month). Compute is billed by the second — you pay only when queries are running. You can scale compute up or down instantly.

Best for: Companies that want flexibility and do not want to be locked into a single cloud provider. Snowflake's pricing model is predictable and scales well from small to large workloads.

Typical monthly cost for a $5M-$30M company: $200-$800/month for most use cases. Can be higher with heavy query loads.

Watch out for: Costs can spike if users run expensive queries without guardrails. Set up resource monitors and query budgets from day one.

Google BigQuery

What it is: Google's fully managed data warehouse. It is 'serverless,' meaning there is no infrastructure to manage — you just load data and run queries.

How pricing works: Two models. On-demand pricing charges per query based on the amount of data scanned (roughly $5 per TB scanned). Flat-rate pricing gives you dedicated compute capacity for a fixed monthly fee (starting around $500/month for 100 slots).

Best for: Companies already in the Google Cloud ecosystem, teams with variable or unpredictable query volumes, and organizations that want zero infrastructure management.

Typical monthly cost for a $5M-$30M company: $100-$500/month on on-demand pricing. Flat-rate makes sense once you are consistently spending $500+/month on on-demand.

Watch out for: On-demand costs can surprise you. A poorly written query that scans an entire large table can cost $20-$50 in a single run. Partition your tables and train your team to use query previews.

Amazon Redshift

What it is: Amazon's data warehouse offering, one of the oldest in the cloud space (launched 2012). Recently introduced a serverless option alongside its traditional provisioned clusters.

How pricing works: Traditional Redshift requires provisioning a cluster of a specific size. You pay by the hour whether you are running queries or not. Redshift Serverless charges based on compute used, similar to Snowflake.

Best for: Companies heavily invested in the AWS ecosystem, especially those using many other AWS services. Redshift integrates tightly with S3, Lambda, and other AWS tools.

Typical monthly cost for a $5M-$30M company: $300-$1,000/month for a small provisioned cluster. Serverless pricing varies but is comparable to Snowflake.

Watch out for: Traditional Redshift clusters require more management overhead than Snowflake or BigQuery. Resizing clusters can cause downtime. Serverless Redshift eliminates most of these issues but is still maturing.

So Which One Should You Pick?

For most companies between $2M and $50M, here is the decision tree:

• **Already on Google Cloud or using lots of Google tools?** Start with BigQuery. Lowest setup friction, lowest starting cost.
• **Already on AWS with multiple AWS services?** Redshift Serverless is a natural fit. Avoid traditional provisioned Redshift unless you have a DBA.
• **Cloud-agnostic or want maximum flexibility?** Snowflake. It is the most popular choice among modern data teams for good reason — clean pricing, excellent documentation, and it works on any major cloud.
• **Not sure or just getting started?** BigQuery or Snowflake. Both have generous free tiers to start.

The honest truth: for a company at this stage, all three will work. The differences are marginal. Pick the one that fits your existing ecosystem and move on — the value comes from having a warehouse at all, not from which one you choose.