# Snowflake Premium Edition, Review Downgrade

> Flags Snowflake accounts on Business Critical or VPS edition for a compliance-led review of whether a lower edition would do.

Source: https://zop.dev/integrations/snowflake/recommendations/snowflake-premium-edition-review-downgrade

---

## Edition multiplies the price of every credit

The [Snowflake edition](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/intro-editions) an organization chooses determines the unit
cost of the credits and storage it uses, alongside region and whether the account is On Demand or
Capacity. Business Critical adds enhanced security and data protection on top of Enterprise,
including support for PHI under HIPAA and HITRUST CSF and account failover and failback. Virtual
Private Snowflake adds a fully separate environment that shares no hardware with other accounts.

Those are real requirements for regulated workloads. But an account can stay on a premium
edition after the project that needed it has ended, and then every warehouse credit is bought at the
premium rate.

## Checking which edition each account runs

An organization administrator can list every account and its edition:

```sql
SHOW ACCOUNTS;
```

The `edition` column shows each account's edition. A user who is not an
organization administrator can see their own account's edition in Snowsight under the user menu,
View Account Details. The [editions management page](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/organizations-manage-accounts-editions)
describes both paths.

## What makes an account qualify

The check reads the edition that ZopNight records for the account. It fires when that value is
Business Critical or VPS, compared without regard to case. Standard and Enterprise accounts never
qualify. There is no metric window and no spend condition: a small premium account qualifies just
like a large one.

## When no finding is raised

An account whose edition was not captured is skipped rather than assumed to be premium. ZopNight
cannot see which premium features you use, so every Business Critical or VPS account is flagged.
Treat the finding as a question for your security and compliance owners, not a verdict, and dismiss
it once they confirm the edition is needed.

## Why the saving is left blank

This is a governance advisory with no dollar amount. The difference between editions depends on
your contract's per-credit rates, which vary by region and by On Demand or Capacity terms, and the
decision turns on compliance requirements that no usage metric can settle. What is at stake is the
edition premium on all compute and storage the account consumes.

## Reviewing and changing the edition

1. List what the account uses that only a premium edition provides, for example PHI stored under a
   business associate agreement or account failover. Get written sign-off from security or
   compliance that those are no longer needed.
2. Stop using every feature unique to the higher edition. Snowflake refuses a downgrade while such
   features remain in use.
3. As organization administrator, run
   `ALTER ACCOUNT <name> SET EDITION = 'ENTERPRISE';`
   The command accepts STANDARD, ENTERPRISE or BUSINESS_CRITICAL. Managed accounts, including reader
   accounts, need Snowflake Support instead.

**Warning**
After an edition change, the account cannot be downgraded again on the same day. Confirm
the target edition before running the command.