Comparison
Two ways to take data and AI all the way to production. This page compares graal and Snowflake criterion by criterion: what each one publishes, in its own words, dated and sourced.
At a glance
graal
With you: your Kubernetes or OpenShift, on-premises or with the hosting provider of your choice. No third-party service is needed to run it.
Snowflake
A service operated by Snowflake on the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud public clouds: “You can’t install and run Snowflake locally or on private cloud infrastructures, whether on-premises or hosted.”
graal
Two open source products, under the Apache 2.0 license: graal Data Platform and graal Agentic Platform.
Snowflake
A hosted service: “the Service is offered as an online, hosted solution”. The terms state that the customer has no right to a copy of the service’s code.
graal
Annual vendor subscription per vCPU, unlimited users and agents, no usage-based billing.
Snowflake
Consumption-based, in credits: “We keep pricing simple with a consumption-based pricing model.” Bought on demand or as pre-paid capacity.
graal
An MCP server drives the Data Platform, under a service account scoped to one project and with human approval. The Agentic Platform puts any agent to work on your processes.
Snowflake
Cortex Agents and the Snowflake-managed MCP server have been generally available since 4 November 2025, with role-based access control.
Criterion by criterion
Every Snowflake cell links to its source and to the date we accessed it. Quotes stay in their original language.
| Criterion | graal | Snowflake |
|---|---|---|
| Where the platform runs | Your Kubernetes or OpenShift: on-premises, in a private cloud or with the hosting provider of your choice. Installed with Helm, without cluster administration rights; offline installation is possible. | On AWS, Azure and Google Cloud: “our platform currently operates on public cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)”. Neither locally nor on a private cloud: “You can’t install and run Snowflake locally or on private cloud infrastructures, whether on-premises or hosted.” |
| Who operates the control plane | You do. No SaaS and no telemetry: no third-party service is needed to run it. Operations by graal Services is a separate service that you choose. | Snowflake: “Snowflake manages software updates and infrastructure so you don’t have to.” The cloud services layer “runs on compute instances that are provisioned by Snowflake from the cloud provider”. |
| Vendor, headquarters, governing law | GRAAL.SYSTEMS SAS, a French-law vendor, Paris. | Snowflake Inc., incorporated in Delaware, principal executive offices in Menlo Park (California). For a French customer, the contracting entity is Snowflake Computing Netherlands B.V. (Amsterdam). The online terms of service set the law of the State of Delaware and the courts of New Castle County (section 13.4). |
| Software license | Open source, Apache 2.0 license, for the Data Platform and the Agentic Platform alike. | “Customer acknowledges that the Service is offered as an online, hosted solution, and that Customer has no right to obtain a copy of the underlying computer code for the Service, except (if applicable) for the Client Software in object code format.” |
| Open formats | Parquet and Apache Iceberg on your S3 storage, standard SQL with Trino; low-code pipelines exported as Pandas or PySpark code. | Iceberg tables follow the open specification, with Parquet files: “Apache Iceberg™ tables for Snowflake combine the performance and query semantics of typical Snowflake tables with external cloud storage that you manage.” |
| Published pricing model | Annual vendor subscription per vCPU, unlimited users and agents, no usage-based billing. 8-week pilot; graal Services priced separately. | “We keep pricing simple with a consumption-based pricing model.” Compute consumes credits: “The billed cost of using compute resources is calculated by multiplying the number of consumed credits by the price of a credit.” Two ways to buy: on demand or pre-paid capacity. |
| Generative AI and agents | MCP server built into the Data Platform, one service account per project, per-agent policies, human approval, revocation, audit. LLM gateway and RAG over your documents. Agentic Platform: workflows of agents and people, any agent, measured guarantees. | Cortex Agents, generally available since 4 November 2025: “Cortex Agents orchestrate across both structured and unstructured data sources to deliver insights.” Snowflake-managed MCP server, generally available the same day: “a standards-based interface that lets AI agents securely retrieve data from Snowflake accounts without needing to deploy separate infrastructure”. Role-based access control on the server and on its tools. |
A cell older than 90 days is re-checked or removed. Has something changed? Write to contact@graal.systems and we will correct it.
When to choose graal
graal installs on your Kubernetes or OpenShift, on-premises or with the hosting provider of your choice. The platform, the data and the traces stay in the infrastructure you picked.
The vendor subscription is computed per vCPU, with unlimited users and agents and no usage-based billing: the bill varies neither with the number of queries nor with the number of people or agents.
Both platforms are open source, under the Apache 2.0 license. Low-code pipelines export as Pandas or PySpark code, and the data stays in Parquet and Iceberg on your storage.
A service account scoped to one project, per-agent policies, human approval for sensitive actions, immediate revocation and an audit log: your agents create, run and schedule without holding the keys to the platform.
When Snowflake suits you
Snowflake takes care of infrastructure and updates: “Snowflake manages software updates and infrastructure so you don’t have to.”
Snowflake publishes: “Regions in the European Economic Area (EEA) have achieved the Hébergeurs de Données de Santé (HDS) certification for the hosting and protection of personal health data governed by French law (requires supplemental contract terms).”
The Virtual Private Snowflake edition offers “a completely separate Snowflake environment, isolated from all other Snowflake accounts”.
The Snowflake-managed MCP server lets agents retrieve data “without needing to deploy separate infrastructure”, with role-based access control.
Frequently asked questions
graal installs on your Kubernetes or OpenShift, on-premises or with the hosting provider of your choice. It offers an Iceberg lakehouse with Trino SQL, pipelines, notebooks, ML and generative AI, with permissions, audit and costs per project.
Yes. It sits in Parquet and Iceberg on your S3 storage, and a compatible engine reads it in standard SQL. Low-code pipelines export as Pandas or PySpark code.
An annual vendor subscription per vCPU, with unlimited users and agents and no usage-based billing. The amount depends on your vCPU quota and the services you choose: you receive it after a scoping conversation.
Yes, through the Data Platform’s MCP server, under a service account scoped to one project. Sensitive actions wait for a manager’s approval, and every call is visible live and in the audit log.
The 8-week pilot puts graal to the test on your use case, in your infrastructure.