Snowflake Certification Practice Test

What is the billing method utilized by Snowflake?

1. Per millisecond

2. Per minute

3. Per hour

4. Per second

The correct answer is: Per second

The billing method utilized by Snowflake is based on per second usage. This approach allows for granular tracking of the compute resources consumed, ensuring that customers are billed only for what they actually use, down to the second. This flexibility is a significant advantage for organizations that may have variable workloads and need to optimize costs based on their actual consumption. Charging on a per-second basis encourages efficiency in resource utilization because it allows users to start and stop their workloads as needed without the fear of incurring charges for unused time. This model is particularly beneficial for workloads that may be sporadic or require scaling up and down rapidly. In contrast, billing methods such as per minute or per hour do not provide the same level of granularity and can lead to inefficiencies, as organizations may end up paying for idle time when the compute resources are not actively being used. Therefore, per second billing aligns well with the cloud-native architecture of Snowflake, which aims to provide scalable and cost-effective data warehousing solutions.