Snowflake vs ClickHouse: Pricing Comparison

In a comparison between Snowflake and ClickHouse Cloud regarding pricing and performance, ClickHouse emerges as a cost-effective alternative, particularly for scenarios requiring real-time data processing and analytics. Previously, ClickHouse was available only as a self-managed service, making cost comparisons with Snowflake challenging. However, with the launch of ClickHouse Cloud as a fully managed cloud-based database similar to Snowflake, the comparison has become more straightforward. ClickHouse offers substantial savings in compute costs compared to Snowflake, with one scenario showing a 72.3% cost reduction, while also providing faster performance for certain use cases. Although Snowflake remains a more general-purpose solution with advanced features beneficial for data warehousing and diverse analytics, ClickHouse excels in high-speed analytics, customer-facing dashboards, and time-series data, offering a higher RAM-to-CPU ratio. Snowflake's pricing structure, which includes additional costs for features and data transfers, is perceived as less predictable compared to ClickHouse's simpler and more transparent pricing model. The analysis highlights that while Snowflake has cheaper storage costs, ClickHouse's inclusion of data transfer charges and features at no additional cost makes it a competitive option for shared use cases like business intelligence and machine learning.