Snowflake Marketplace is a data marketplace inside Snowflake: a provider publishes a listing, and a consumer gets a database in its own account that it can query beside its own tables. This guide follows a buyer of company data from the listing page to the first query. It covers how a listing reaches your account, how trials, requests and billing work, which questions to put to a provider, and how company data delivered direct reaches the same account.
How a listing reaches your account
Snowflake's documentation describes a listing as an enhanced form of Secure Data Sharing: a share, or a Snowflake Native App, packaged with metadata such as a title, a description, sample queries and details of the provider. A Marketplace listing is published on the Marketplace for consumers to find. A private listing is offered to named accounts only and can reach accounts in any region. The Marketplace is available to accounts hosted on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, with the exception of Microsoft Azure Government.
When you get a listing, Snowflake creates a database in your account from the provider's share. According to the sharing documentation, no data is copied between accounts, shared data takes no storage in the consumer account, the provider pays for storage and you pay for the compute that queries it. The database is read-only: you query it and join it to your own tables, but you cannot insert into it or create objects in it.
If a listing is not yet available in your region, the access guide says to select Request. Where the provider uses Cross-Cloud Auto-Fulfillment, Snowflake replicates the data product to your region and refreshes it on the schedule the provider has set. Ask which schedule that is, because it decides how current the data is in your region.
Two facts about the provider's side matter to a buyer. First, a provider can see how its listing is used: Snowflake's usage view for listings records, for each access, the consumer account and the objects touched, and it does not give the provider the text of your queries. Second, a provider can withdraw a listing. Snowflake's removal documentation says that unpublishing hides a listing from the Marketplace while existing consumers keep access, and that after a deletion consumers are notified by email and keep access for a retirement window of exactly 30 days for free and limited trial listings, or one full calendar month for paid ones.
Free, trial and paid listings
Snowflake describes three access levels for Marketplace listings, and each is obtained in a different way.
| Listing | What you get | How you get it | What is charged |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | The full published dataset | Select Get | Compute for your queries |
| Limited trial | Indefinite access to a limited set of data, or time-limited access to all data or to a limited set | Select Get for the trial, then Request for the full product | Compute for your queries, and no listing charge for the trial |
| Paid | The data product on the provider's pricing plan | Select Get, choose Paid, review the price, select Buy | The plan: a flat fee at the start of the term, or usage-based charges each month |
A provider can set the availability period of a limited trial from 1 to 90 days. To move from a trial to the full product you select Request and complete a form with your contact details. The provider is notified and contacts you, and you may need to agree to further commercial terms before it fulfils the request. A trial of a paid listing ends without a charge unless you choose to buy.
Getting a listing needs the ACCOUNTADMIN role or a role holding the CREATE DATABASE and IMPORT SHARE privileges, and an organisation administrator or another authorised person must have accepted the Snowflake Provider and Consumer Terms once. A role other than ACCOUNTADMIN also needs the PURCHASE DATA EXCHANGE LISTING privilege to buy a paid listing. The billing page says purchases are billed in US dollars and that, on a usage-based plan, a query can be billable when it reads paid data even if it returns no rows. That matters to anyone who schedules checks against a listing.
Questions to ask a provider
A listing page shows the fields the provider chose to complete. The listing reference names them: a description, attributes for update frequency, geographic coverage and time range, sample queries, a link to documentation (required for public listings), a Terms of Service field, region availability and, optionally, a data dictionary with a preview of up to ten rows. For company data those fields answer some questions and leave the rest to the provider.
| Question | Why it matters | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| What is one row, and what is its key? | A join at the wrong grain duplicates companies | Data dictionary, sample queries |
| Which identifiers does each company carry? | Domain, ticker, ISIN, LEI and FIGI decide what the data joins to | Data dictionary, preview rows |
| How often is each table refreshed, and are past periods rewritten? | Rewritten history changes reports you have already sent | Update frequency attribute, then ask |
| Can I read the data as it stood on a past date? | A back-test needs what was known on each day | Ask the provider |
| How are labels produced, and how are changes announced? | A changed label moves companies between your segments | Linked documentation, then ask |
| Where does each record come from, and when was it observed? | A compliance review asks for the source of every field | Description, linked documentation |
| What is the coverage on my own list? | Coverage on your own list matters more than a headline count | Geographic coverage attribute, a trial |
| Which uses do the terms allow, and what happens when the term ends? | Internal use, embedding in a product and redistribution are separate permissions | Terms of Service field, the contract |
| How is it billed, and in which regions is it offered? | A usage-based plan bills queries, and a missing region means a replica | Pricing plan, region availability |
The same questions apply to any vendor, so here is what Fokals states on them. Each company has one stable company ID, and a listed company carries its ticker, MIC, ISIN, LEI and share-class FIGI. Daily and weekly tables are written once, after the period closes, and are not revised. Each record carries the time it was observed, so the data reads point-in-time.
Labels and scores are produced under named, frozen versions, and a breaking change ships as a new version with at least 90 days' notice. The data dictionary lists every table and column, and the methodology says how the labels are made.
Test a listing before you commit
A trial costs the compute you spend on it, so use it to measure the data on your own accounts instead of reading the description. Run four checks.
- Open the data dictionary and run the sample queries unchanged, to confirm they return what the description says.
- Load 200 to 500 of your own accounts into a table and join them on the identifier the provider documents, usually a domain or a ticker. Count the matches and keep the misses to see why they missed. The guide to joining company data to CRM tables shows the join and the match rate.
- Read the newest and the oldest date in each table and compare them with the refresh and history the provider stated.
- Run the same query twice, a week apart, and check that rows for closed periods have not changed.
A trial that holds a limited set of data may not contain your accounts at all, so ask what the limited set is before you test.
When the data you need is delivered direct
Where the data is listed in your region, a listing is the shorter route: you query a database in place, with no file to load and no schedule to run. Some providers license directly. Data marketplace vs direct licensing sets out how those routes differ.
Fokals is delivered direct, by REST API and as bulk files in JSON, JSON Lines or CSV, which you load into your own account with Snowflake's own loader. Loading is ordinary work in Snowflake: stage the files, run COPY INTO into a table and MERGE each day's increment, as the guide to loading company data into Snowflake shows in worked SQL. Because you hold the data, its terms come from a written agreement and not from a listing, a point the guide to Secure Data Sharing for licensing teams develops. The delivery page describes the API and the export formats.
Frequently asked questions
How does Snowflake Marketplace work for a data buyer?
A provider publishes a listing. You sign in to Snowsight, open Marketplace, find the listing and select Get, or Request if it has to be replicated to your region. Snowflake creates a read-only database in your account from the provider's share, and you query it with your own compute. Paid listings are billed through Snowflake on a flat-fee or usage-based plan.
Do I need a Snowflake account to look at Marketplace listings?
Not to browse: Snowflake's documentation says you can browse listings on the Marketplace whether or not you have an account. To get a listing you need an account, with the ACCOUNTADMIN role or a role holding the CREATE DATABASE and IMPORT SHARE privileges, and an organisation administrator or another authorised person must first accept the Snowflake Provider and Consumer Terms.
Is data from Snowflake Marketplace copied into my account?
Snowflake's documentation says that no data is copied between accounts when a share is used, and that shared data takes no storage in the consumer account. When a listing is fulfilled to your region by replication, the data is replicated into a secure share area that Snowflake manages in that region, and it is refreshed on the provider's schedule.
What is a limited trial listing on Snowflake Marketplace?
It gives instant, limited access to a data product. Snowflake lists the trial as indefinite access to a limited set of data, or time-limited access to all data or to a limited set, with the period set by the provider from 1 to 90 days. A trial of a paid listing ends without a listing charge, and you select Request to ask for the full product.
How do I load company data delivered direct into Snowflake?
Snowflake loads data from files you stage, whether on its own internal stages or in your cloud storage, and an API's output can be written to files first. Fokals is delivered direct, by REST API and as bulk files, so you stage the files, run COPY INTO and query the table like any other in your account.
What should I ask a data provider before getting a listing?
Ask what one row is and what its key is, which identifiers each company carries, how often tables are refreshed and whether past periods are rewritten, whether values can be read as of a past date, how labels are produced and changed, where each record comes from, what the coverage is on your list, which uses the terms allow, and how it is billed. The table above sets each question beside the part of a listing that answers it.
What this page says about the products it names was checked against their public documentation on 4 October 2026. Product and company names are trademarks of their owners. Fokals is not affiliated with them or endorsed by them.