How to Cancel Snowflake in 2026 — Stop Usage Charges + Close Account

Last updated: February 2026 • Difficulty: Medium

Why Snowflake Bills Spiral Out of Control

• Auto-resume warehouses: Queries automatically spin up warehouses that bill by the second
• Scheduled tasks: Snowpipe, Tasks, and Streams run continuously and bill credits
• Storage costs: $23-40/TB/month — data grows but rarely shrinks
• Time Travel + Fail-Safe: Deleted data still bills for 1-7 days (Time Travel) + 7 days (Fail-Safe)
• Materialized views: Auto-refresh consumes credits every time base data changes
• Serverless features: Snowpark, Search Optimization, and Clustering all bill separately

Step 1: Suspend All Warehouses Immediately

Stop the billing clock right now:

1. Log in to Snowsight (app.snowflake.com)
2. Go to Admin → Warehouses
3. Click each warehouse → Suspend
4. Set AUTO_RESUME = FALSE on every warehouse to prevent queries from restarting them
5. Run: ALTER WAREHOUSE my_wh SET AUTO_RESUME = FALSE;

Step 2: Disable All Scheduled Tasks

1. Run: SHOW TASKS IN ACCOUNT; to find all tasks
2. Suspend each: ALTER TASK my_task SUSPEND;
3. Check Snowpipe: SHOW PIPES IN ACCOUNT; → pause each pipe
4. Check Streams: SHOW STREAMS IN ACCOUNT; — streams themselves don't cost, but tasks consuming them do
5. Disable materialized view refresh: drop or suspend MV auto-refresh

Step 3: Export Your Data

1. Use COPY INTO @my_stage to export tables to an internal stage
2. Download from stage: GET @my_stage file:///local/path/
3. For large exports: unload to S3/GCS/Azure Blob directly using external stages
4. Export as Parquet or CSV depending on your downstream needs
5. Verify row counts match before proceeding

Step 4: Drop Everything + Close Account

1. Drop all databases: DROP DATABASE my_db; (reduces storage charges)
2. Drop all warehouses: DROP WAREHOUSE my_wh;
3. Contact Snowflake support to formally close the account
4. For contract customers: review your commitment — early termination may have penalties
5. Request final invoice and data deletion confirmation in writing

Free and Cheaper Alternatives

• DuckDB: Free, open-source analytical database — runs locally, handles TB-scale data
• ClickHouse: Free open-source or cloud from $0.027/hour — 10-100x cheaper for analytics
• BigQuery: 1TB free queries/month + 10GB free storage — pay only for what you scan
• PostgreSQL + Citus: Free, handles analytical workloads with columnar storage extension
• Motherduck: DuckDB in the cloud, generous free tier, serverless
• Apache Spark: Free, open-source — runs on your existing infrastructure

The Math: Snowflake vs Alternatives