Using budgets for warehouses (shared resources)

Warehouses are typically the largest compute domain in a Snowflake account and are commonly shared across multiple business units or teams. You can add warehouses to a budget as a shared resource and configure it so that credits consumed by them count toward the budget’s spending limit only when selected users run queries on those warehouses. This enables tracking and controlling warehouse usage across different teams or cost centers.

For example, suppose multiple teams run queries on the same warehouse. You can track consumption for each team in separate budgets based on which users are executing queries: one budget for the engineering team and another for the finance team.

This feature extends the same user-level sharing model that is already generally available for AI Functions, Cortex Code, Cortex Agents, and Snowflake CoWork. For the general workflow (tagging users and adding user tags to the budget), see Using budgets for AI features (shared resources).

Important

Warehouse attribution has product-specific behaviors that differ meaningfully from AI feature domains. Before using this feature, review the Usage notes section below, especially the sections on attribution semantics and data latency.

Add warehouses to a budget

After you have configured the users who are using the warehouse, you must specify which warehouses will be tracked by the budget. Use the ADD_SHARED_RESOURCE method.

Tip

To see all warehouses available in your account, run SHOW WAREHOUSES.

Example: Add all warehouses to the budget

CALL finance_budget!ADD_SHARED_RESOURCE('WAREHOUSE');

The finance_budget tracks consumption across all warehouses for users who are tagged with the tag-value pair added to the budget. Future warehouses are automatically included.

Example: Add a specific warehouse to the budget

CALL finance_budget!ADD_SHARED_RESOURCE(
    'WAREHOUSE',
    (SELECT SYSTEM$REFERENCE('WAREHOUSE', 'SNOWADHOC')));

The finance_budget tracks consumption by the SNOWADHOC warehouse, but only for users who are tagged with the tag-value pair that was added to the budget.

Note

Warehouses are object instances, so the second argument must be a SYSTEM$REFERENCE to the specific warehouse rather than a plain warehouse name.

Creating a budget for warehouses in Snowsight

You can create and configure budgets for warehouses directly in Snowsight using a guided user interface.

Note

Using tags to define the scope of a budget is required for shared resources such as warehouses.

  1. Sign in to Snowsight.

  2. In the navigation menu, select Admin » Cost management.

  3. Select the Budgets tab.

  4. Select + Budget on the top right corner.

  5. On the Basic Information page, complete the required fields.

  6. On the Budget scope page, add the objects that you want to include in the budget.

  7. For setting budgets on warehouses, move to the Budgets Scope page and update as follows.

    In the Tags on users section:

    • Search for and select relevant tags (for example, cost center or team).
    • This enables tracking activity for tagged users, which is required when monitoring shared resources.

    In the Select resources to monitor section, enable Warehouses.

  8. Configure Warehouses.

    • By default, all warehouses are selected, and any warehouses created in the future are automatically included.
    • To track only specific warehouses, select them individually.

  9. Review your selections.

    Confirm that the correct warehouses are selected and that the selected tags correctly reflect the intended scope.

  10. Complete the remaining configuration and click Create.

After configuration, the Budget details page lists the selected warehouses under the shared-resources section, confirming that the warehouse is now in scope for the budget’s measurement.

Usage notes

A budget with user-scoped shared warehouses measures a subset of total warehouse spend, because not all warehouse costs can be attributed to individual users. Data freshness also differs from other budget types. For details, see Attribution semantics and Data freshness below.

Attribution semantics

This warehouse budget tracks a user’s share of interactively-issued query costs: not their share of total warehouse cost. The following types of spend are not attributed to individual users and are therefore not included in the budget measurement:

  • Idle time: warehouse uptime between queries cannot be attributed to any user.
  • Very short queries: queries below a minimum duration threshold are not tracked.
  • Overhead costs: some warehouse-level costs, such as cloud services credits, are not broken down per user.
  • Automated workloads: tasks, dynamic table refreshes, materialized view refreshes, and similar system-initiated work do not have an end-user identity to attribute.

These are the same attribution boundaries documented for the QUERY_ATTRIBUTION_HISTORY view.

When a warehouse is in scope as both a direct resource and a shared resource, the direct resource measurement takes precedence. If a warehouse is added to a budget both via a resource tag and via ADD_SHARED_RESOURCE, the budget counts the warehouse’s spend once, through the direct path. The user-scoped portion is not added on top.

Data freshness

Data for warehouse budgets is available with higher latency than other budget types. For shared warehouses (this feature), data freshness is up to 11 hours for standard budgets and up to 6 hours for low latency budgets.

Plan alert thresholds and reporting cadences accordingly.

Spend for long-running queries is recorded when the query completes. A query does not appear in the budget until it finishes, so the effective delay for a long-running query may exceed the figures above.

Configuration changes take up to approximately 2 hours to reflect. After you add or remove a shared warehouse, or change the user-tag set, expect up to approximately 2 hours before the next budget measurement reflects the updated configuration.

Limitations and considerations

  • For warehouses, the budget tracks the WAREHOUSE_METERING and QUERY_ACCELERATION service types.
  • A warehouse budget measures only the portion of warehouse spend attributable to individual users. See Attribution semantics above.
  • End-to-end data freshness for shared warehouses is up to approximately 11 hours for standard budgets and up to 6 hours for low latency budgets. See Data freshness above for details.
  • Configuration changes (adding/removing warehouses or user tags) take up to approximately 2 hours to reflect in budget measurements.