SNOW vs TDC: How Snowflake and Teradata Compare (2026)

Same yardstick, side by side (as of August 2026). Valuation lined up like this is most meaningful for two names in the same corner of the market, which these are. Figures are approximate; verify before investing.

Reading it: TDC is the cheaper of the two on forward earnings, but cheaper is not the same as better. Pair the valuation with growth (how far the forward P/E sits below the trailing P/E) and risk (beta) before you decide.

The metrics above tell you which is the marginally better business. The bigger risk for most people is not picking the slightly worse stock, it is over-concentrating. SNOW and TDC share themes, so owning both, or adding either to what you already hold, can quietly push a large share of your portfolio into one bet.

This is the part a generic comparison page cannot answer, because it depends on what you own. Connect your brokerage and Walnut shows your real, combined SNOW and TDC exposure, flags overlap with your existing positions, and tells you if adding one would tip you past a concentration you are comfortable with, read-only by default, with your login staying at your broker. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform that lets organizations store, query, and share large volumes of data without managing their own infrastructure. Its core product is a data warehouse that runs on top of the major public clouds (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and separates storage from compute, so customers pay for what they use. Snowflake makes money on a consumption basis: customers buy credits and burn them as they run queries and workloads. Over time the platform has expanded beyond warehousing into data sharing, data engineering, application development (Snowpark), and AI features for running models and natural-language queries on top of governed data. Snowflake competes for the central role in enterprise data stacks, positioning itself as a neutral layer that works across clouds. Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, it serves thousands of enterprise customers worldwide.

Full SNOW guide

Teradata Corporation sells a massively parallel analytics database and the software around it. Its VantageCloud platform runs large-scale enterprise analytics across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud as well as on customer-owned hardware, with ClearScape Analytics for in-database machine learning and, since 2026, an Autonomous Knowledge Platform aimed at putting AI agents into production against governed enterprise data. The customer base skews to very large, data-heavy institutions in banking, telecommunications, retail, healthcare and government, many of which have run Teradata systems for decades. Spun out of NCR in 2007 and headquartered in San Diego, the company converted from perpetual licenses to subscriptions years ago, so roughly 89% of revenue is now recurring.

Full TDC guide

Both fit overlapping themes, but they are not interchangeable. The useful comparison is which set of drivers and risks you want exposure to.

• SNOW drivers: Consumption model and net revenue retention; AI and unstructured data workloads.
• TDC drivers: Public cloud ARR migration; Agentic AI and the hybrid angle.

A faster-growing, richer-valued name usually swings harder, so it suits a longer horizon and a higher tolerance for volatility; a steadier, more cash-generative business suits a more conservative or income-minded investor. The honest test is which set of risks you could hold through a drawdown: Snowflake faces intense competition from Databricks (lakehouse architecture) and from the hyperscalers' native data services (Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Fabric), all of which can bundle and discount aggressively. For TDC, the core risk is secular: Teradata's on-premises installed base is shrinking, and total revenue has been flat to down for several years, with Q3 2026 revenue guided 4% to 6% lower year over year.

Growth-minded investors who believe the theme has years to run tend to accept the richer multiple for more upside; value-minded investors lean toward the cheaper forward earnings and steadier profile. Pick SNOW if you believe its drivers more; TDC if you believe its. Many investors hold both, but since they share themes, that is a concentrated bet, not diversification. Decide deliberately and check overlap. For the full detail, see the SNOW and TDC guides.

SNOW. Snowflake trades on growth and free cash flow rather than GAAP profitability, which remains negative due to heavy stock-based compensation. The premium price-to-sales multiple reflects expectations for durable consumption growth and an expanding role in enterprise AI data stacks. Deceleration in net revenue retention tends to compress the multiple quickly.

TDC. Teradata screens as a deep-value software name: an enterprise value near $2.2 billion against ~$1.69 billion of revenue and guided adjusted free cash flow of ~$330 million to ~$350 million. The trailing P/E near 5x is misleading because GAAP earnings include a ~$315 million after-tax SAP settlement benefit; the forward multiple of roughly 10x on non-GAAP EPS guidance of $2.65 to $2.73 is the more representative figure. Analyst consensus sits around a hold rating with an average price target in the mid-$30s.

Headline figures (approximate, early 2026): SNOW shows revenue (ttm) ~$3.8 billion, revenue growth high-twenties to ~30% year over year, product revenue mix the large majority of total revenue, net revenue retention ~125%, historically higher; TDC shows revenue (ttm) ~$1.69B, q2 2026 revenue ~$410M (flat YoY), public cloud arr ~$686M (+8% YoY), total arr ~$1.51B (+1% YoY).

SNOW and TDC are related but distinct: same themes, different businesses and risks. Neither wins in the abstract; the right pick is whichever thesis you actually believe, sized so you are not over-concentrated in one theme. Walnut can show your combined SNOW and TDC exposure against your real portfolio. It is not an investment adviser.