This article explains how Snowflake credits work, how they relate to your X-Small warehouse, and best practices for managing them efficiently to ensure optimal data performance without exceeding your monthly allocation.
You’ll learn:
What Snowflake credits are and how they’re used
How credit consumption aligns with query processing time
How to configure your warehouse for efficient credit use
What Are Snowflake Credits?
Snowflake credits are the billing unit used by Snowflake—the cloud data warehouse Polar uses to process and store your data. Each credit represents one hour of compute power used by your data warehouse.
When you run a query or load data in Polar, your Snowflake warehouse “wakes up” to process those operations. Credits are consumed only while the warehouse is active.
Key details:
1 credit = 1 hour of runtime
Credits are only consumed during active processing
When inactive, the warehouse can automatically suspend to stop consumption
It automatically resumes when a new query is triggered
Example:
If you have 70 Snowflake credits in your plan, that equates to 70 hours of active query processing time per month. Running queries for about 2 hours per day would use approximately 60 credits—well within your monthly allocation.
How Polar Uses Snowflake Credits
Polar provisions a dedicated X-Small warehouse for each customer’s account. This warehouse handles query execution, metric calculations, and dashboard visualizations.
The X-Small size is the most efficient for most use cases:
Designed for lightweight analytics workloads
Balances speed and cost effectively
Automatically scales based on query demand when necessary
Polar’s Snowflake instance leverages auto-suspend and resume configurations to prevent idle credit consumption and ensure cost-efficient performance.
Because most users interact intermittently—refreshing dashboards, exploring reports, or running scheduled updates—this configuration minimizes wasted credits while maintaining responsiveness.
Best Practices to Optimize Credit Usage
To ensure your Snowflake credits last throughout the month without interruption, consider the following practices:
Enable Auto-Suspend
Set your warehouse to suspend automatically after 5–10 minutes of inactivity. This stops credit usage when you’re not running queries.Use Auto-Resume
Ensure automatic resume is enabled so queries trigger the warehouse instantly when needed.Schedule Heavy Jobs During Off-Peak Times
If your team runs frequent data syncs or complex custom reports, consider scheduling them during low-traffic hours.Monitor Credit Consumption
Polar’s Customer Success team can share insights on your current Snowflake usage if you’re curious about consumption patterns or performance optimization.Avoid Leaving Dashboards Running
Leaving live dashboards refreshing repeatedly can consume unnecessary compute time.
With these simple adjustments, most Polar users never come close to exhausting their monthly credit allocation.
Snowflake credits in Polar represent your warehouse’s active compute time—essentially, the “engine hours” of your analytics. By understanding how they’re consumed and enabling auto-suspend features, you can optimize performance and ensure a cost-efficient experience.
Efficient use of Snowflake credits allows Polar to maintain powerful, scalable data processing while keeping your analytics fast, accurate, and affordable.
For more details, visit the Polar Help Center or contact your Customer Success Manager to review your current setup.