Snowflake Cortex splits AI onto a dedicated, edition-independent AI Credit
Snowflake moved Cortex AI features onto a new AI Credit meter priced by routing ($2.00 global / $2.20 regional), decoupling AI cost from Snowflake edition; Platform Credits ($2/$3/$4) still cover warehouse compute and storage.
All Cortex AI usage billed as ordinary Snowflake credits at the account edition rate ($2 Standard / $3 Enterprise / $4 Business Critical) - identical AI usage cost 2x on Business Critical vs Standard.
AI features (AI Functions, Cortex Search / Batch Search, Cortex Agents, Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex REST API, AI Parse Doc) bill in a separate edition-independent AI Credit - $2.00 per credit for global cross-region routing, $2.20 for regional routing - with automatic ACV-based discounts (capacity discounts excluded). Warehouse compute and storage stay on edition-priced Platform Credits.
Proof of change
Snowflake Cortex's pricing pages, as we captured them on two dates.
Showing the whole page as captured — scroll either panel, or open it at full size.
- These prices come from our capture alone — they were not confirmed against an independent second source.
- 3 pages had no counterpart in the earlier capture and are not shown.
Both images are our own captures, taken on the dates shown. The pixels are unmodified — nothing is retouched, and where a region is highlighted the marker is drawn over the image, not into it. Open either capture to see it at full resolution.
Snowflake restructured Cortex pricing so that AI features no longer inherit the customer edition credit rate. The pricing docs now define two credit currencies: AI Credits (flat, edition-independent, priced only by cross-region routing) and Platform Credits (edition-priced, for warehouses, storage, and all non-AI usage).
The AI Credit price is set by the CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION parameter: $2.00 per AI Credit when requests route globally (ANY_REGION / *_GLOBAL, lowest price and broadest model availability) and $2.20 per AI Credit when routing is disabled or region-locked for data residency. Automatic discounts tied to annual contract value (ACV) apply to AI Credits, but pre-paid capacity discounts explicitly do not.
Features on the AI Credit meter: Cortex Code, Cortex Agents, Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex REST API, AI Functions, Cortex Search, Cortex Batch Search, and AI Parse Doc. Cortex Fine-tuning and the standalone Cortex Analyst API remain on legacy Platform-Credit pricing. Platform Credit edition prices ($2 / $3 / $4 per credit) and $23/TB storage are unchanged. The net effect: identical AI usage now costs the same across editions, while the warehouse compute that runs each AI query still varies by edition.
Note: per-model AI-Credit token rates (and any specific model additions such as newer Claude variants) live only in Table 6 of the downloadable Snowflake Service Consumption Table, which is not captured on the public pricing pages; this change records the AI Credit restructure confirmed on the live pricing docs.
Snowflake moved AI features (AI Functions, Cortex Search / Batch Search, Cortex Agents, Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex REST API, AI Parse Doc) onto a dedicated, edition-independent AI Credit priced by cross-region routing — $2.00 global / $2.20 regional. Platform Credits ($2/$3/$4 by edition) and $23/TB storage unchanged; capacity discounts do not apply to AI Credits, only automatic ACV-based discounts.