Unused Snowflake Credits? A Practical Guide to Your Options

If you manage data platforms long enough, ending up with some unused credits in your cloud data warehouse, such as Snowflake, is almost inevitable.

Teams often buy ahead to avoid overages later. But then your workloads may change, or your priorities shift. What looked right at contract time doesn’t always line up six or 12 months later. You may need more credits than anticipated, but you might be left with extra credits waiting to be used.  

The reason this happens isn’t poor planning. Unused credits are a common byproduct of running modern data infrastructure. The question you face now isn't why it happened but what to do once you realize you have unused credits.

In our opinion? It’s great news.  

This guide walks you through the most common paths Snowflake customers consider, the trade-offs behind each, and how some teams used Domo to achieve real business wins.

Keep reading, or schedule a custom consultation about what you can build with your credits.

Why Snowflake credits go unused

Unused credits typically show up for predictable reasons:

• Conservative purchasing to avoid costly overages
• Seasonal or uneven workloads that don’t materialize as expected
• Shifts in roadmap or ownership that slow adoption
• Cost controls that intentionally cap usage

Unused credits aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Rather, it often means you’re being smart about managing risk, not making poor forecasts.

When unused credits become a problem

Having leftover credits doesn't usually hurt day-to-day operations. The pressure shows up later in scenarios when:

• It’s time to renew contracts or plan budgets.
• Leadership asks if the credits were worth the cost.
• Procurement looks for places to tighten spend.

At that point, the unused credits shift from “flexibility” to scrutiny. Teams are left deciding whether to change how they use the credits, renegotiate their commitments, or find new ways to use the credits they’ve already paid for.

Common options Snowflake customers consider with unused credits

Most Snowflake customers explore some combination of the following.

1. Running heavier internal workloads or backfills

This is often a team’s first idea: using their remaining credits to reprocess historical data, run deeper backfills, or execute one-time analytical jobs

Tradeoff: Useful for clearing backlogs but rarely creates ongoing value. Once the work is done, the credits are gone.

2. Optimizing for short-term usage increases

Teams may try to accelerate projects already in progress, expand queries or models temporarily, or encourage more exploratory analysis.  

Tradeoff: This can help in the short term, but it’s difficult to force ongoing usage just to consume credits.

3. Applying credits through Snowflake Marketplace applications

Some teams look beyond internal workloads and consider putting their Snowflake credits toward buying Marketplace applications. This happens through the Snowflake Marketplace Capacity Drawdown program.

Tradeoff: This path is often underexplored simply because teams aren’t aware it’s an option or aren’t sure which applications deliver meaningful value.

4. Downgrading or renegotiating commitments (as a last resort)

Renegotiation makes sense in some cases, but it’s usually complicated. Contract changes take time, which, in the process, can stall internal momentum. Also, it might limit your future flexibility. If you need more credits later, you  could end up paying more per credit than you did originally.  

Tradeoff: This approach addresses spend but doesn’t help teams deliver more value with data.

Using Snowflake credits on Marketplace applications

For teams that want to turn unused credits into something durable, Snowflake Marketplace applications are often worth a closer look.

Marketplace apps allow customers to apply existing Snowflake credits toward tools that sit on top of Snowflake, extend how data is used across the business, and avoid new procurement cycles or vendors.

One option many teams evaluate is partnering with us at Domo. Rather than replacing Snowflake, Domo works alongside it by:  

• Giving business users access to governed data.
• Building analytics, dashboards, and applications easily, without heavy engineering lift.
• Using Marketplace credits instead of introducing new budget requests.

Investing unused credits on Domo through the Marketplace is a way to extend the value of Snowflake into daily decision-making using spend that’s already been approved.

Domo MMM Native App for marketing teams

An option for marketing teams is the Domo Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) native app, which can be found in Snowflake’s Marketplace and runs entirely within Snowflake. Drawing on advanced statistics, it answers questions standard reports can’t, like which channels increase revenue, where budget is wasted, and what happens if you shift spend between channels. .  

The app is fast, reliable, and secure (your data never leaves Snowflake). It supports up to 10 channels and translates results into plain English using Snowflake Cortex AI.  

How teams have used Domo and Snowflake together in practice

To make this more concrete, here are real-world examples of how organizations applied this approach.

National Tiles

National Tiles is a national tile and stone retailer that uses Snowflake as its data foundation and Domo as the analytics and application layer to unify operations across the business. With Domo on Snowflake, teams replaced siloed reporting with real-time dashboards and custom apps that support everything from inventory visibility to safety and compliance. More than 500 employees use these tools every day.

All Response Media

All Response Media is a performance media agency that used Snowflake as its data foundation and Domo to unify campaign, finance, and client reporting in one place. With Domo on Snowflake, teams replaced manual spreadsheets with real-time dashboards, giving clients faster visibility into performance and freeing analysts to focus on improving campaigns instead of creating reports.

Panasonic

Panasonic brought together customer support, operational, and performance data in Domo to create a single source of truth for teams across the business. The result was faster visibility into support trends and product issues, helping teams respond more quickly, improve service quality, and drive ongoing innovation.

Lenovo

Lenovo relies on Domo to give teams across sales, operations, and leadership a unified view of performance across regions and product lines. Centralized metrics and automated reporting reduced manual effort, helping leaders make faster, more consistent decisions at a global scale.

DHL

DHL collects ambient temperature data across its global package logistics network, but previously it could take a week to clean, analyze, and share that data using spreadsheets. With Domo, teams moved to real-time analytics that make it easier to combine data and turn operational signals into actionable insight.

Zippo

Zippo’s marketing data was fragmented across regions and channels, which made it difficult to get a consistent view of performance. By centralizing data in Domo, teams aligned around shared metrics, improved campaign attribution and cart flow, and reduced costs tied to shipping and operations.

Schnucks

Schnucks wanted better visibility into store operations and merchandising performance across hundreds of locations. Using Domo to centralize its data, Schnucks was able to put that data at the heart of every decision, so their shelves stay stocked and the customer experience remains strong.  

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

Freddy’s is one of the fastest growing fast-casual restaurant franchises in the US, generating billions of rows of operational and customer data across more than 500 locations. Domo gives their data teams a way to monitor performance at scale, using data to improve their menu mix, track important metrics, choose new restaurant locations, and improve their customer loyalty program.

How to decide what’s right for your organization

There’s no single “correct” answer for what to do with unused Snowflake credits. The right path depends on your goals.

To determine the right approach, it may help to ask:

• Do we need short-term usage, or something that will benefit the business long-term?
• Are we trying to optimize spend or extend impact?
• Do our insights reach the right people at the right time?
• Would applying credits now make things easier in the future (like with budget, procurement, or adoption)?

For many data leaders, Marketplace applications offer a middle ground: They let you use your existing commitments to deliver broader value without reworking your core platform.

Unused credits aren’t a crisis. They’re a chance to make a choice.  With the right approach, they become an opportunity to do more with the data you already have.

Want a custom consultation with our team about putting your credits to work?