Cloud-based data warehouse platforms like Snowflake and Amazon Redshift provide excellent performance, scalability, and business intelligence tools. In terms of core functionality, both platforms provide similar capabilities, such as relational management, security, scalability, cost efficiency, etc. There are, however, several differences between them, such as pricing, user experience and deployment options.
* There is no maintenance required with Snowflake as it is a complete SaaS (Software as a Service) offering. In contrast, AWS Redshift clusters require manual maintenance.
* The Snowflake security model uses always-on encryption to enforce strict security checks, while Redshift uses a flexible, customizable approach.
* Storage and computation in Snowflake are completely independent, meaning the storage costs are approximately the same as those in S3. In contrast, AWS bypasses this problem with a Red Shift spectrum and lets you query data that is directly available in S3. Despite this, it is not flawless like Snowflake.
