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 (.00 global / .20 regional), decoupling AI cost from Snowflake edition; Platform Credits (//) still cover warehouse compute and storage.
All Cortex AI usage billed as ordinary Snowflake credits at the account edition rate ( Standard / Enterprise / 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 - .00 per credit for global cross-region routing, .20 for regional routing - with automatic ACV-based discounts (capacity discounts excluded). Warehouse compute and storage stay on edition-priced Platform Credits.
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: .00 per AI Credit when requests route globally (ANY_REGION / *_GLOBAL, lowest price and broadest model availability) and .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 ( / / per credit) and 3/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.