# Data warehouses: what AI models recommend, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "cloud data warehouse" and as "analytical data warehouse platform", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/it-data/data-warehouses/

**Standing:** Snowflake leads with 47% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 45 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Snowflake | 47% | 28% | 65 |
| 2 | Google BigQuery | 44% | 16% | 67 |
| 3 | ClickHouse Cloud | 2% | 14% | 22 |
| 4 | Amazon Redshift | 0% | 24% | 62 |
| 5 | Databricks | 0% | 30% | 37 |
| 6 | Microsoft Fabric | 0% | 8% | 13 |
| 7 | Azure Synapse Analytics | 0% | 21% | 24 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: no first choice; alternatives Firebolt
- GPT-5.4 mini: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Databricks SQL, Google BigQuery
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Fabric
- Perplexity Sonar: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL Database, Databricks, Google BigQuery
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery
- Mistral Small: Google BigQuery, Snowflake
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery
- Llama 4 Maverick: Snowflake; alternatives Azure SQL Database, Google BigQuery
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Fabric
- Kimi K2: Google BigQuery; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Snowflake
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Google BigQuery; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake
- MiniMax M2.5: Snowflake; alternatives Amazon Redshift, Azure Synapse Analytics, Databricks, Google BigQuery

## Sources the answers cite

65 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- clickhouse.com: 28 answers, 43 citations
- atlan.com: 22 answers, 22 citations
- fortegrp.com: 20 answers, 20 citations
- scnsoft.com: 19 answers, 20 citations
- domo.com: 16 answers, 16 citations
- motherduck.com: 13 answers, 15 citations
- blog.dataddo.com: 13 answers, 13 citations
- dev.to: 11 answers, 13 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://atlan.com/best-cloud-data-warehouses (21 answers)
- https://fortegrp.com/insights/best-cloud-data-warehouse (20 answers)
- https://clickhouse.com/resources/engineering/top-5-cloud-data-warehouses (19 answers)
- https://scnsoft.com/data/data-warehouse/cloud (17 answers)
- https://domo.com/learn/article/best-data-warehouse-platforms (15 answers)
- https://blog.dataddo.com/best-cloud-data-warehouse-solutions-and-how-to-choose-the-right-one (13 answers)
- https://clickhouse.com/blog/cloud-data-warehouses-cost-performance-comparison (13 answers)
- https://tech-insider.org/redshift-vs-snowflake-vs-bigquery-2026 (11 answers)
- https://techplained.com/snowflake-vs-bigquery-vs-databricks (11 answers)
- https://dashdb.io/blog/best-data-warehouse (9 answers)

## Warned against

- Amazon Redshift: 15 of 62 labels negative. "provisioning (always-on) solutions like Redshift can quietly rack up bills when idle" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt)
- Snowflake: 18 of 65 labels negative. "Avoid Snowflake for tight budgets" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt)
- Google BigQuery: 11 of 67 labels negative. "BigQuery can be great, but on-demand query pricing can surprise teams if you don't put quotas and guardrails in place." (GPT-5.4 mini, negative prompt)
- Databricks: 11 of 37 labels negative. "only if your roadmap is heavily ML/AI-driven ... but DBU pricing is unpredictable, and it's the most operationally expensive of the four" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, paraphrase prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.