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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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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 »

AWS product comparisons

Read about AWS products side-by-side

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