Independent FinOps or Vendor‑Native FinOps: A Practical Guide for Snowflake & Databricks

Vendor‑provided “FinOps” features have one undeniable advantage: convenience. They’re already in the console; procurement is simple; you don’t add another supplier to manage. But these features are shipped by companies whose revenue grows with your consumption—credits, compute, and storage. That business model encourages visibility and budgeting features, not the sort of automation that measurably reduces your bill.

In this post I want to provide a practical comparison of independent (aka third‑party) FinOps platforms and vendor‑native cost features—specifically for Snowflake and Databricks. I’ll explain the incentive misalignment behind vendor tooling, outline what a neutral FinOps layer should do, and show where independent platforms have materially lowered spend for real teams, without compromising SLAs. Where relevant, I’ll also point to resources that go deeper.

Scope note: We intentionally center Snowflake and Databricks (not “every cloud under the sun”) because that’s where most analytics platforms sit today—and because that’s where independent FinOps can drive the biggest, most verifiable wins for data teams.

1. The business‑model conflict behind vendor “FinOps”

Snowflake, Databricks, and hyperscalers monetize consumption. When a vendor ships cost tooling, it will—rationally—gravitate toward reporting and guardrail features (usage views, budget alerts, spend anomaly notifications) instead of deep, continuous optimization that could materially reduce your usage. Put bluntly: if their tool aggressively shrank your bill, it would shrink their revenue.

That doesn’t make vendor tools “bad.” They are often the fastest path to baseline visibility and governance. But it does limit how far they can push savings and efficiency—especially the sort that comes from automating controls like warehouse right‑sizing, suspend/resume policies, parameter tuning, and intelligent routing. An independent FinOps platform can go further precisely because it’s not paid on your consumption; its incentives can be aligned with yours.

Plain‑English rule of thumb: If a feature primarily shows you money, it’s easy for a consumption vendor to ship. If it primarily removes money from the vendor’s meter, expect it to be conservative, delayed, or absent (for example, Snowflake has been talking about Adaptive Warehouses for several years now and even officially announced at this year’s summit but it hasn’t been publicly released yet).

2. What “independent FinOps” means

A credible independent platform should provide:

• Aligned incentives: Pricing that scales with verified customer savings (or other outcome‑aligned models), so the provider “wins” when you do.
  
• Verifiable results: Savings that can be confirmed from your own Snowflake/Databricks metadata—no black boxes.
  
• Performance protection: Multi‑layer safeguards so optimizations never degrade SLAs or user experience.
  
• Operational depth: Not just “see something, say something,” but ranked recommendations and safe automation to implement them.
  

These are design tenets of Keebo’s approach (AI agent for cost + performance on Snowflake & Databricks): success‑based pricing, metadata‑only architecture, and six layers of SLA protection across optimization modules.

3. Where vendor‑native tools are useful (and their real benefit)

Let’s acknowledge what vendor tooling does well:

• Convenience & zero lift: No extra contracts, no connectors to deploy.
  
• Baseline visibility: Usage charts, budgets, and standard alerts help teams stop the bleeding.
  
• Native fit: Policies and features are tuned to the vendor’s platform surface area.
  

If your objective is to understand your spend and avoid basic overages, vendor‑native features may be “good enough” for a period. But if your goal is to materially reduce spend or increase efficiency—month after month—while maintaining performance, you’ll need an approach that’s free to pull harder on the levers that actually move Snowflake and Databricks bills.

4. Independent FinOps for Snowflake & Databricks: what it should actually do

Independent FinOps isn’t a dashboard—it’s a set of closed‑loop controls designed to remove waste and protect SLAs. Concretely, look for the following capabilities for Snowflake and Databricks:

4.1 Warehouse right‑sizing & runtime policies (Snowflake + Databricks)

Automated adjustment of warehouse sizes, memory parameters, and suspend/resume settings in real time, under explicit SLAs you define. In practice, this is where many teams bank the first double‑digit savings without touching application code.

Want a deeper dive into right‑sizing and suspend/resume strategies? See Warehouse Optimization for mechanism design and time‑to‑value.

4.2 Workload intelligence (beyond dashboards)

Pinpoint slow queries, underused tables, expensive workloads, and hotspots across teams. The difference from a vendor’s usage page is actionability: team‑level attribution, ranked recommendations, and clear next steps—often implementable by the platform itself in approval mode. See an example of how Keebo provides Workload Intelligence to its customers.

4.3 Smart query routing (performance‑safe savings)

An intelligent, drop‑in proxy that routes incoming queries to the most cost‑efficient warehouse while honoring SLAs—preventing overprovisioning and protecting user experience. It requires no changes to dashboards or client apps and is fully auditable.

For the routing mechanics and performance considerations, see Query Routing Reimagined (what signals go into routing and how guardrails prevent regressions).

4.4 Guardrails and governance

Independent automation should be as controlled as you need it to be: run in recommendation/approval mode or autopilot, with role‑based access, rule logging, and audit trails. The point is not to take human judgment out; it’s to remove toil while retaining control.

5. Make independent as seamless as native (practical ways to reduce friction)

It’s reasonable to worry about “adding another vendor.” Here’s how to keep the experience close to native without giving up independent incentives:

• Metadata‑only integration. Prefer platforms that connect via metadata (no access to your data) with SOC 2 controls and encryption. Keebo follows this model.
  
• Fast setup, low maintenance. These are obviously important criteria that you should be looking for when evaluating your independent options. For example, Keebo is designed to only take ~30 minutes of an engineer’s time to get going and no ongoing upkeep.
  
• Approval mode first. Make sure you have a choice of both recommendation/approval versus safe autopilot for repeatable wins. Your environment and needs will change overtime so make sure you have platform that gives you that flexibility.
  
• Marketplace listing to simplify procurement. Independent tools listed on your platform’s marketplace can streamline billing and vendor onboarding. For example, this is the main reason Keebo is available on every major marketplace, including Snowflake Marketplace, AWS, Azure and others to make it easier for customers to try and adopt.
  Note: You can also look for consolidated billing options (where available) to keep invoicing inside your existing account—pairing marketplace convenience with success‑based pricing so you only pay in proportion to verified savings.
  

The upshot: vendor‑native wins on “it’s already there.” Independent wins when it feels just as easy—then compounds value by automating optimizations your vendor is not incentivized to push.

6. Results that are hard to argue with (case studies)

Costco Travel — 50% lower Snowflake costs with hands‑off optimization

• Context: A lean data team running hundreds of thousands of queries per month needed to control compute while keeping SLAs tight.
  
• What changed: Automated right‑sizing and proactive suspend/resume replaced manual monitoring and warehouse tweaks.
  
• Outcome: 50% reduction in Snowflake costs and more time for user‑centric work—“a game‑changer for our small team in a demanding environment,” as the team describes it.
  

Cimpress — $245K annual savings and team autonomy at scale

• Context: A decentralized, multi‑tenant environment (VistaPrint, National Pen, BuildASign, etc.) with growing waste from failed queries and underused assets.
  
• What changed: Workload intelligence surfaced ~250,000 failed queries (consuming 60,000+ credits/year) and ~12,000 unused tables, with clear, ranked actions; more than six teams gained the ability to manage their own analytics footprint and spend.
  
• Outcome: ~$245,000/year in savings plus stronger accountability and decision‑making—“critical visibility and actionable insights” that let engineers shift focus to higher‑value work.
  

Takeaway: When cost tooling is independent and performance‑safe, it moves beyond dashboards to durable savings and healthier operations—freeing small teams to focus and giving large, distributed teams a shared, verifiable source of truth.

7. Incentives: say “aligned,” not “mutual”

Use aligned incentives to describe why independent FinOps can go further. With success‑based pricing, the provider’s upside grows when your verified spend goes down while meeting SLAs. That alignment is the structural reason independent FinOps can prioritize deep optimizations a consumption vendor won’t. Keebo explicitly uses a success‑based model:

“Because pricing is success‑based, our incentives are aligned with yours: we only win when you save—and the more we help you save while meeting SLAs, the more value we deliver.”

8. When vendor‑native is “good enough”—and when it isn’t

Good enough if you need:

• Baseline visibility and alerts ASAP.
  
• Budgets/resource monitors to prevent obvious overruns.
  
• Early‑stage governance while your footprint is still small.
  

Not enough if you need:

• Double‑digit reductions month after month.
  
• To free engineers from manual tuning (sizing, suspend/resume, parameter tweaks).
  
• Verifiable savings Finance can audit from Snowflake/Databricks metadata.
  
• SLA‑safe optimization with multi‑layer protections.
  

9. How to evaluate independent FinOps platforms (scorecard)

Use this checklist in RFPs and bakeoffs:

1. Incentive model. Is pricing success‑based or otherwise tied to measurable outcomes?
   
2. Verification. Can Finance/Engineering audit savings directly from Snowflake/Databricks metadata?
   
3. Automation depth. Right‑sizing, suspend/resume, parameter tuning, and query routing available? Approval and autopilot modes?
   
4. SLA guardrails. Multi‑layer protections and audit trails for every change?
   
5. Security/privacy. Metadata‑only, SOC 2, encryption, RBAC.
   
6. Time‑to‑value. Minutes/hours to set up; minimal ops to maintain.
   
7. Operational impact. Evidence that optimizations maintain or improve performance while reducing cost (e.g., routing outcomes).
   

10. A quick look at real levers for Snowflake bills

Beyond “query less,” the levers that matter in Snowflake include right‑sizing warehouses, policies that suspend idle capacity without hurting SLAs, and routing high‑variance workloads to the most efficient capacity class—plus transparent reporting so Finance can audit the results. If you’re looking for a deeper walkthrough of Snowflake’s cost model and savings levers, the Snowflake Pricing explainer is a good place to start.

11. Bottom line

Use vendor‑native tooling for hygiene and budgets. Add an independent FinOps layer when you want material, verifiable savings with no performance slip—and make it feel as easy as native by insisting on metadata‑only integration, fast setup, approval/autopilot choices, and marketplace‑friendly billing. Here at Keebo we have tried to lead by example by showing the industry how you can build a platform around those principles (success‑based pricing, metadata‑only, multi‑layer SLA protection, and modules for right‑sizing, workload intelligence, and routing).