What's the Difference Between AWS Snow Family and AWS Snowball?

Compare AWS Snow Family and AWS Snowball side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Compare side-by-side

Comparisons	AWS Snow Family	AWS Snowball
Category	Storage, Edge & Transfer	Storage, Data Transfer
Description	Physical devices to collect and process data at the edge and migrate data to and from AWS.	Petabyte-scale data transport solution using secure devices to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS.
Best for	Edge computing Data migration Tactical edge Disconnected environments	Large-scale data migration Disaster recovery Data center decommission Content distribution
Key features	Snowcone Snowball Edge Snowmobile Edge computing NFS support	Snowball Edge Compute Optimized Snowball Edge Storage Optimized Encryption Clustering Edge computing
Pricing model	Pay per job + device days + data transfer	Pay per job + shipping + days on-site
Free tier	No	No
Expert take	“Snow Family devices (Snowcone, Snowball, Snowmobile) move petabytes physically when network transfer is impractical. Edge models run EC2 and Lambda in disconnected environments.” — Riku Kobayashi, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]	“Snowball physically ships petabytes when network transfer would take weeks. Edge Compute models run EC2 and Lambda locally for data processing in disconnected environments.” — Giovanni Lauria, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page	Learn more about AWS Snow Family »	Learn more about AWS Snowball »

When to use AWS Snow Family or AWS Snowball

Use AWS Snow Family when:

Edge computing
Data migration
Tactical edge
Disconnected environments

Learn more about AWS Snow Family »

Use AWS Snowball when:

Large-scale data migration
Disaster recovery
Data center decommission
Content distribution

Learn more about AWS Snowball »

Next steps with AWS for Storage

Create a free account

Start building with AWS Snow Family and AWS Snowball on the AWS Free Tier.

Get started with AWS Snow Family

Physical devices to collect and process data at the edge and migrate data to and from AWS.

Go to AWS Snow Family

Get started with AWS Snowball

Petabyte-scale data transport solution using secure devices to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS.

Go to AWS Snowball

AWS service comparisons

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon RDS?

DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database for applications with well-defined access patterns that need consistent single-digit millisecond performance. RDS is a managed relational database for applications that need SQL, joins, and transactional integrity across multiple engines.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces?

Both are fully managed, serverless-capable NoSQL databases on AWS. DynamoDB is AWS-native with its own API and data model; Keyspaces is Apache Cassandra-compatible, letting you use existing Cassandra drivers, tools, and expertise.

What are the differences between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon DocumentDB?

Both are fully managed NoSQL databases on AWS, but they serve different data models. DynamoDB is a key-value store optimized for known access patterns at massive scale; DocumentDB is a document database for flexible JSON schemas with MongoDB compatibility.

What's the difference between Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Neptune?

Both handle semi-structured data, but they're optimized for different query patterns. DocumentDB stores and queries JSON documents; Neptune stores and traverses relationships between entities.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB?

Both are fully managed AWS database services, but they serve fundamentally different data models and access patterns. Aurora is a relational database for structured data with relationships; DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store built for single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

What's the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?

Both run SQL queries, but they're optimized for fundamentally different workloads. RDS handles transactional operations (inserts, updates, lookups) for your application. Redshift handles analytical queries (aggregations, scans, joins across billions of rows) for your data team.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Neptune?

Both are purpose-built, fully managed AWS databases, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Aurora handles structured relational data with SQL; Neptune handles highly connected data where relationships between entities are the primary query pattern.

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