Snowflake CLI

Snowflake CLI is an open-source command-line tool explicitly designed for developer-centric workloads in addition to SQL operations. It is a flexible and extensible tool that can accommodate modern development practices and technologies.

With Snowflake CLI, developers can create, manage, update, and view apps running on Snowflake across workloads such as Streamlit in Snowflake, the Snowflake Native App Framework, Snowpark Container Services, and Snowpark. It supports a range of Snowflake features, including user-defined functions, stored procedures, Streamlit in Snowflake, and SQL execution.

Docs: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/developer-guide/snowflake-cli-v2/index.

Quick start: https://quickstarts.snowflake.com/guide/getting-started-with-snowflake-cli

Cheatsheet: https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/sf-cheatsheets/blob/main/snowflake-cli.md

Feel free to file an issue or submit a PR here for general cases. For official support, contact Snowflake support at: https://community.snowflake.com/s/article/How-To-Submit-a-Support-Case-in-Snowflake-Lodge

snow feedback sends a rating and an optional note to Snowflake. Pass --rating from 1 (poor) to 4 (excellent). A note is optional for people and required for an AI agent: name the command you ran, what you expected, and what happened. Pass --yes when stdin is not a terminal. Do not include passwords, tokens, private keys, account locators, data from Snowflake accounts, or SQL that contains customer data.

Install Snowflake CLI

Direct install (recommended)

The direct installer downloads a signed platform binary from the Snowflake CLI repository and unpacks a versioned snow into your home directory.

macOS / Linux / WSL:

curl -LsS https://sfc-repo.snowflakecomputing.com/snowflake-cli/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://sfc-repo.snowflakecomputing.com/snowflake-cli/install.ps1 | iex

Pin a release with --version (or SNOWFLAKE_CLI_VERSION). Pass --no-auto-upgrade with a pin so later snow invocations do not replace it via auto-upgrade. This is the same flag as the root snow --no-auto-upgrade:

curl -LsS https://sfc-repo.snowflakecomputing.com/snowflake-cli/install.sh | sh -s -- --version 3.29.0 --no-auto-upgrade

.\install.ps1 -Version 3.29.0 -NoAutoUpgrade
# or, without saving the script first:
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://sfc-repo.snowflakecomputing.com/snowflake-cli/install.ps1))) -Version 3.29.0 -NoAutoUpgrade

irm ... | iex cannot pass flags. With it, set $env:SNOWFLAKE_CLI_VERSION to pin a release. --no-auto-upgrade has no environment-variable form.

--no-auto-upgrade writes auto_upgrade = false under [cli] in the config.toml the CLI reads. If that file is a symlink, or has a cli table the installer cannot edit safely, the installer stops before installing and tells you what to add yourself.

Upgrade later with snow upgrade (same-major only). This is the only installer that supports it. snow --info reports installation_source; snow --version does not.

Auto-upgrade is off until you opt in, and it applies only to a direct install. Set auto_upgrade = true under [cli] in config.toml, or SNOWFLAKE_CLI_AUTO_UPGRADE=1 for one process. Turn it off with SNOWFLAKE_CLI_AUTO_UPGRADE=0, snow --no-auto-upgrade, or the installer flag --no-auto-upgrade.

Install with uv (PyPi)

Install Snowflake CLI in an isolated environment using uv. Requires Python >= 3.11. snow upgrade refuses on this channel.

uv tool install snowflake-cli
snow --help

Or, with a single command

uvx --from snowflake-cli snow --help

Install with Homebrew (Mac only)

Requires Homebrew.

There are two ways to install Snowflake CLI via Homebrew:

Option 1 – Homebrew core formula (simpler, no tap required):

brew install snowflake-cli
snow --help

The formula is maintained by the Homebrew community and may trail the latest release.

Option 2 – Snowflake-maintained tap (recommended for latest releases):

The tap distributes a pre-built binary (cask) maintained directly by Snowflake and updated with every release. Homebrew requires you to explicitly trust third-party taps before installing casks from them:

brew tap snowflakedb/snowflake-cli
brew trust --cask snowflakedb/snowflake-cli/snowflake-cli
brew install --cask snowflake-cli
snow --help

Once trusted, future upgrades work normally: brew upgrade --cask snowflake-cli

Install from source

Requires Python >= 3.11 and git

git clone https://github.com/snowflakedb/snowflake-cli
cd snowflake-cli
# you can also do the below in an active virtual environment:
# python -m venv .venv
# source .venv/bin/activate
hatch build && pip install .
snow --version

You should now be able to run snow and get the CLI message.

Customize the SQL REPL prompt

The interactive snow sql prompt remains > unless you opt in with --prompt-format or a quoted prompt_format string in the [cli] section of config.toml. Placeholders (case-insensitive) are [user], [host], [account], [role], [warehouse], [database], [schema], and [connection] (the -c connection name). They update after USE. Example:

snow sql --prompt-format "[user]#[warehouse]@[database].[schema]> "

Missing values render as (no user), (no database), and so on. \n is a newline; \[, \], and \\ are literal [, ], and \. Use [#rrggbb] for a foreground colour and [bg:#rrggbb] for a background colour. A colour applies to the prompt text that follows it; it does not colour SQL input. Quote the value because # starts a TOML comment. For example:

[cli]
prompt_format = """┌──[#bca81f][user]@[account].[role].[warehouse].[database].[schema]
[#ffff00]└─$"""

SnowSQL often puts a colour after the marker (└─$[#ffff00]). Here that trailing token is a no-op: it does not colour typed SQL. Place [#ffff00] before └─$ if you want the marker itself yellow.

Unknown bracketed tokens are dropped from the prompt and reported with a warning when the REPL starts. Prefix a colour directive with \[ to display it literally.

Default output format

Commands print a table unless you pass --format. To change that default, set output_format in the [cli] section of config.toml or the SNOWFLAKE_CLI_OUTPUT_FORMAT environment variable. Allowed values are TABLE, JSON, JSON_EXT, CSV, and PLAIN. --format on the command line still wins. In snow sql, !set output_format=<format> changes the format for later statements in that session. !set timing=false hides the Time Elapsed line that follows each statement. !set timing_in_output_file=true also writes that line into a file opened with !spool. Both accept true, yes, on, and 1, or false, no, off, and 0. An empty value is rejected and leaves the current setting unchanged. timing is on by default and timing_in_output_file is off, so a spool file keeps the results only. JSON, JSON_EXT, and CSV output never include the line. !set echo=true prints each statement before its result, on the terminal and in an open !spool file. The default is echo=false. JSON, JSON_EXT, and CSV stay free of that statement so the result stays parseable. One !set changes one option. !set output_file=<path> opens the same file as !spool <path>, and !spool off closes it. To spool from the start of a run, pass -o output_file=<path>. To hide query results on the terminal from the start of a run, pass -o quiet=true. It accepts the same values as !set quiet, and an open spool file still receives the results. To set the output format from the start of a run, pass -o output_format=<format>. It accepts the same names as !set output_format and overrides the output_format config key and the SNOWFLAKE_CLI_OUTPUT_FORMAT variable. It cannot be combined with --format: passing both is an error and no SQL runs. !set output_format can still change the format later.

[cli]
output_format = "JSON"

Get involved

Have a feature idea? Running into a bug? Want to contribute? We'd love to hear from you! Please open or review issues, open pull requests, or reach out to us on developers@snowflake.com

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and contribution guidelines.