📋 Overview

Snowflake's compute power is provided by virtual warehouses, which are clusters of cloud-based resources (CPU, memory and temporary storage) managed entirely by Snowflake.

When a query runs, it uses the compute resources of an active warehouse.

The underlying infrastructure (e.g., AWS EC2, Azure VM) is fully abstracted. Users do not interact with or manage it.

Snowflake compute follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model:

• You are billed based on warehouse size × active runtime
• Charges are calculated in credits that reflect actual cloud costs

💡 Compute charges are separate from storage costs. You pay only for the time warehouses are active

More details: Snowflake Pricing