If your Snowflake bill has been climbing faster than your data usage, you’re not alone. Data transfers within the same region are free, but moving data between regions and cloud providers? That’ll cost you.
Snowflake data transfer can be complicated, but the first step to understanding how to get your costs under control is knowing how you’re being charged.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
- What exactly Snowflake data transfer is
- What you’re features you’re paying for in Snowflake data transfer
- How to calculate your data transfer costs
- Five ways to optimize your spend
What is Snowflake Data Transfer?
Your Snowflake data transfer bill is based on four criteria:
- Data size
- Transfer rate
- Region data is being transferred from
- Cloud provider data is being transferred from
But you’ll find the biggest influencer when it comes to Snowflake data transfer costs is if you’re performing data egress or ingress.
Ingress, when you transfer data into Snowflake, is completely free.
Data egress, on the other hand, is when you send data from Snowflake to another region or cloud provider, and it does incur fees depending on where you send the data. If you’re only looking to make a transfer within the same region, you usually won’t have to pay, but if you’re transferring externally via a table, function, or Data Lake, you’ll be eating a per-byte charge that varies depending on your cloud provider.
Here’s how prices vary depending on your cloud provider*:
Snowflake data transfer costs if you’re using GCP:
| Data Transfer Source Region | Same Cloud Provider & Region |
| US Central 1 (Iowa) | $0.00 |
| US Central 1 (Iowa) | $0.00 |
| Europe West 4 (Netherlands) | $0.00 |
| Europe West 2 (London) | $0.00 |
Snowflake data transfer costs if you’re using AWS:
| Data Transfer Source Region | Data Transfer To Same Cloud Provider, Same Region (per TB) | Data Transfer To Same Cloud Provider, Different Region (per TB) | Data Transfer To Different Cloud Provider or Internet (per TB) |
| US East (Northern Virginia) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| US West (Oregon) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| EU Dublin | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| EU Frankfurt | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| AP Sydney | $0.00 | $140.00 | $140.00 |
| AP Singapore | $0.00 | $90.00 | $120.00 |
| Canada Central | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| US East 2 (Ohio) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| AP Northeast 1 (Tokyo) | $0.00 | $90.00 | $114.00 |
| AP Mumbai | $0.00 | $86.00 | $109.30 |
| US East 1 Commercial Gov | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| Europe (London) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| Asia Pacific (Seoul) | $0.00 | $80.00 | $126.00 |
| US Gov West 1 | $0.00 | $30.00 | $155.00 |
| US Gov West 1 (Fedramp High Plus) | $0.00 | $30.00 | $155.00 |
| Europe (Stockholm) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| Asia Pacific (Osaka) | $0.00 | $90.00 | $114.00 |
| South America East 1 (São Paulo) | $0.00 | $138.00 | $150.00 |
| EU (Paris) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| Asia Pacific (Jakarta) | $0.00 | $100.00 | $132.00 |
| US Gov East 1 (Fedramp High Plus) | $0.00 | $30.00 | $155.00 |
| EU (Zurich) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $90.00 |
| US Gov West 1 (DoD)12 | $0.00 | $30.00 | $155.00 |
Snowflake data transfer costs if you’re using Azure:
| Data Transfer Source Region | Same Region | Same Continent | Different Continent | Different Cloud Provider or Internet |
| East US 2 (Virginia) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| West US 2 (Washington) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| West Europe (Netherlands) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| Australia East (New South Wales) | $0.00 | $80.00 | $80.00 | $120.00 |
| Canada Central (Toronto) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| Southeast Asia (Singapore) | $0.00 | $80.00 | $80.00 | $120.00 |
| Switzerland North | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| US Gov Virginia | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| US Central (Iowa) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| North Europe (Ireland) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| Japan East (Tokyo) | $0.00 | $80.00 | $80.00 | $120.00 |
| UAE North (Dubai) | $0.00 | $80.00 | $80.00 | $120.00 |
| South Central US (Texas) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
| Central India (Pune) | $0.00 | $80.00 | $80.00 | $120.00 |
| UK South (London) | $0.00 | $20.00 | $50.00 | $87.50 |
*Note: Pricing data reflects rates as of June 2025. For the most recent pricing, always consult Snowflake’s official pricing guide.
How Snowflake Data Transfer Costs Work
Snowflake data transfer costs aren’t just based on if you’re transferring data to another cloud provider or region. You final bill will be influenced by these three factors as well:
- If you’re replicating data
- If you’re unloading data
- If you’re writing external functions
Replicating Data
Replicating data simply means creating a copy of your data and storing it in a separate location. Data replication is one of the best ways to prepare yourself for disaster recovery because you won’t have to worry about losing all of your data in case of an outage or issues with your primary account. It’s also useful if you want to provide read-only access to datasets for reports.
Replication starts to appear in your data transfer costs if you decide to copy your data to a Snowflake account hosted on a different platform or in a different region.
Those additional costs do some with added benefits though:
- Improve data availability
- Lower latency
- Improve performance for users accessing data worldwide
Unloading Data
Unloading data into Snowflake means you’re extracting information from a database and exporting it into a storage system like Azure Blob or GCP, or an external file system. Unloading data means you can use that information for other applications, like analytics core reporting.
The biggest factors that influence data transfer costs with unloading are:
- Data backup frequency
- Data volume
- Storage
Writing External Functions
External functions in Snowflake are when user-defined functions are stored and executed outside of Snowflake. This feature appeals to users because it makes it much easier to:
- Access APIs and other services outside of Snowflake like geocodes and custom code
- Export and re-import external data when accessing third-party services
- Streamline data flow
- Enhance Snowflake’s integration with external services (e.g., machine learning models)
How to Calculate Your Data Transfer Spend
Calculating data ingress is easy enough because it’s free. But egress comes with a per-bye transfer fee.
There are several ways for you to keep tabs on your data transfer spend:
- Use Snowsight: Provides a visual dashboard on cost overviews, but not very in-depth.
- Execute queries against ACCOUNT_USAGE schema: Pulls usage and cost data the organization level – only accessible to ORGADMIN or ACCOUNTADMIN roles.
- Execute queries against ORGANIZATION_USAGE schema: Contains data about usage and costs at the organization level and is only accessible to users with ORGADMIN or ACCOUNTADMIN roles.
To use Snowsight, you will need to be an account administrator or have the ACCOUNTADMIN role. If you do, you can view your overall Snowflake costs by day, week, or month.
5 Ways to Optimize Snowflake Data Transfer Costs
Now that you know how Snowflake data transfer costs work, you can start optimizing your spend. Try these five best practices to keep your bills low.
Monitor Data Transfer Usage and Trends
The best way to keep your Snowflake bill from surprising you is careful monitoring. Regularly review your data transfer costs to make sure nothing is out of the ordinary.
If you use Snowflake’s reports, you can get comprehensive data reports on:
- Amount of data transferred
- Where data moved to/from
- Associated costs
Use this information to track and benchmark your data transfers so it’s easy to identify any unusual spikes or drops. You can either do this with manual checks, or you can invest in a third-party tool to track these metrics for you.
Reduce Unnecessary Transfers
Minimize your data duplication and merge datasets when possible to reduce any unnecessary transfers. This will help you cut back on the amount of data you need to send, which will help bring down your data transfer costs.
Try Snowflake’s Snowpipe Data Transfer Optimization
Snowflake has a lot of internal optimization options. Snowpipe in particular is designed to maximize efficiency while cutting costs.
Snowpipe’s automated data loading reduces transfer costs by eliminating the need for manual batch processing. Its auto-scaling capabilities mean you only have to pay for compute resources when data is actually being transferred, saving you from idle time charges.
Use Snowflake’s Data Compression and Encryption Features
Another one of Snowflake’s built-in tools is its data compression and encryption feature. This is a big help for data transfer costs as the compression minimizes the amount of data you need to transfer, while the encryption keeps your information safe and secure.
Try a Third-Party Snowflake Optimization Tool
While Snowflake’s built-in tools provide basic optimization, many organizations need more sophisticated cost management to actually achieve notable savings. That’s where specialized third-party solutions become valuable.
Yuki’s plug-and-play Snowflake optimization tools mean you can automate that entire process.
You’ll get alerts for spikes or drops in performance, automated right-sizing for warehouses, and built-in hands-off query optimization. On average, Yuki saves customers an average of 30% on Snowflake spend without their first month alone.
Curious to see how much Yuki can help you save? Reach out now for your demo.
