Snowflake Marketplace and the alternatives for data sellers

Snowflake's documentation calls a listing an enhanced form of Secure Data Sharing. A provider publishes tables, views or an application from the account where the data already sits, adds a title, description and sample queries, and consumers get access inside their own Snowflake accounts.

Listings can reach accounts in other regions and on other cloud platforms, which a plain direct share cannot. For the buyer, there is no file to download and no pipeline to build; the data appears as something they can query.

Why sellers choose it

That design is the main reason to choose it. Many analytics and data science teams already work in Snowflake, so a listing lands in the tool they use every day, and updates reach them as soon as the provider changes the underlying data.

• Trial accounts and reader accounts cannot publish to the Marketplace; a full account is required.
• An organisation administrator has to accept the Snowflake Provider and Consumer Terms, and Snowflake approves provider profiles against its provider policies.
• Paid listings support usage-based pricing (per query, billable events, a monthly fee with an optional cap), subscriptions with one-time or recurring billing, and installment plans.
• Stripe pays providers after consumers pay; when a consumer buys with a Snowflake capacity commitment, Snowflake pays the provider instead.
• The pages we checked do not publish the fee Snowflake keeps on paid listings. Payout reports show gross amounts, fees and taxes, so ask Snowflake for the current rate before you set a price.

• Zero-copy delivery. Buyers query shared data in place, so there is no export, no transfer and no stale copy to chase.
• Billing is built in. Paid listings bill the consumer through Snowflake and pay out through Stripe, so you don't invoice every customer yourself.
• Trials are easy. A limited trial of up to 90 days lets a buyer test the data before paying.
• Reach inside a large customer base. Your listing is visible to teams who already pay for Snowflake and look there first.

What DataBroker doesn't do

None of this is something DataBroker offers. We teach brokering and provide tools for sourcing and closing deals, not a data-sharing platform. If your data is a set of tables that buyers will query regularly, list it on Snowflake.

• The data is not tabular. Source code, audio, video, images and document archives don't map neatly onto a shared table, and AI labs buying them usually want files.
• The owner doesn't use Snowflake. Opening a full account and learning to manage shares is a real cost for a company selling one dataset once.
• The buyer pool is a handful of companies. Licensing training data to a few AI labs is a negotiation, often with exclusivity terms, not a catalogue purchase.
• Nobody has checked the rights yet. A listing assumes the owner can license the data. For an archive left behind by a closed company, that is the first question, not a formality.

Where brokers work

Brokers work in that space. The DataBroker academy walks through finding owners, checking rights and consent, putting a value range on the data and signing the documents in order, and the app supplies the lead finder, value estimates for codebases, tasks and raw data, contract templates and a CRM to run it.

1. 1

   Check the format

   Tables that update on a schedule point to Snowflake or AWS. Files, code and media point to a direct or brokered deal.

2. 2

   Check where buyers work

   Ask your three likeliest buyers which platform they would want it on. Their answer often settles the question.

3. 3

   Check the rights

   Before any listing, confirm who owns the data, what the people in it agreed to, and whether resale is allowed.

4. 4

   Price it

   Work out a range from what it would cost the buyer to build the data and what it is worth to them now, then pick the pricing model that matches how they will use it.