nao vs Snowflake Cortex
Explore nao, the first open source analytics agent, as an alternative to Snowflake Cortex. Compare their context options, features, pricing, and more.
About Snowflake Cortex
Snowflake Cortex is Snowflake’s built-in AI and text-to-SQL layer. You create a view, pick tables, and add a prompt, with broader rollout managed via Snowflake Intelligence.
Why choose nao over Snowflake Cortex?
- Works for your whole company — not limited to users with Snowflake credentials
- Fully flexible context options — not limited to warehouse and Snowflake semantics
- Built-in evaluation framework to measure and improve answer accuracy
Our review of Snowflake Cortex agent
Snowflake Cortex is very easy to turn on if your Snowflake is on the right cloud: you create a semantic view, add tables, and write a prompt, and you are up and running. The semantics live entirely inside Snowflake and are disconnected from your existing dbt or external semantic layer, and Cortex only works for users with Snowflake accounts, with broader rollout done via Snowflake Intelligence and SQL configuration. There is no native evaluation framework, so reliability remains hard to measure.
Feature comparison
| Feature | nao | Snowflake Cortex |
|---|---|---|
| End user UX | Chat interface, transparent SQL, interactive charts | Basic chat UI — minimal, designed for data engineers not business users |
| Data team UX | Synchronized context, built-in evaluation | Needs to create Snowflake semantic views before the agent can be used |
| Reliability | Evaluation framework + context versioning | No evaluation layer — accuracy depends on Snowflake defaults |
| Context flexibility | File system context | Limited options — prompt and table sampling in Snowflake only |
| Monitoring | Audit logs, usage tracking, feedback loop | Snowflake query history only |
| Cost | Open source / self-hosted | Snowflake credits (metered) |
Context options
| Context source | nao | Snowflake Cortex |
|---|---|---|
| Table sampling | ||
| dbt | ||
| Prompt | ||
| Rules | ||
| Skills | ||
| Any semantic layer | Snowflake semantics only | |
| MCPs |
Why choose nao
- Works for your whole company — not limited to users with Snowflake credentials
- Fully flexible context options — not limited to warehouse and Snowflake semantics
- Built-in evaluation framework to measure and improve answer accuracy
Why choose Snowflake Cortex
- Fast POC option for teams already on Snowflake
- Data stays inside Snowflake — strong compliance argument for regulated industries
- More suited to data teams than to business end users
