Connect Snowflake
The following fields are required when creating a Snowflake connection
Field | Description | Examples |
---|---|---|
Account | The Snowflake account to connect to. Take a look here to determine what the account field should look like based on your region. | |
Role | A mandatory field indicating what role should be assumed after connecting to Snowflake | transformer |
Database | The logical database to connect to and run queries against. | analytics |
Warehouse | The virtual warehouse to use for running queries. | transforming |
Note: A crucial part of working with dbt atop Snowflake is ensuring that users (in development environments) and/or service accounts (in deployment to production environments) have the correct permissions to take actions on Snowflake! Here is documentation of some example permissions to configure Snowflake access.
Username / Password
Available in: Development environments, Deployment environments
The Username / Password
auth method is the simplest way to authenticate
Development or Deployment credentials in a dbt project. Simply enter your Snowflake
username (specifically, the login_name
) and the corresponding user's Snowflake password
to authenticate dbt Cloud to run queries against Snowflake on behalf of a Snowflake user.
Note: The schema field in the Developer Credentials section is a required field.

Key Pair
Available in: Development environments, Deployment environments
The Keypair
auth method uses Snowflake's Key Pair Authentication to authenticate Development or Deployment credentials for a dbt Cloud project.
After generating an encrypted key pair, be sure to set the rsa_public_key
for the Snowflake user to authenticate in dbt Cloud:
alter user jsmith set rsa_public_key='MIIBIjANBgkqh...';
Finally, set the "Private Key" and "Private Key Passphrase" fields in the "Edit Credentials" page to finish configuring dbt Cloud to authenticate with Snowflake using a key pair.
Note: At this time ONLY Encrypted Private Keys are supported by dbt Cloud, and the keys must be of size 4096 or smaller.
In order to successfully fill in the Private Key field, you must include the commented lines below when you add the passphrase. Leaving the PRIVATE KEY PASSPHRASE
field empty will return an error - have a look at the examples below:
Example:
-----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----
< encrypted private key contents here >
-----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----

Snowflake OAuth
Available in: Development environments, Enterprise plans only
The OAuth auth method permits dbt Cloud to run development queries on behalf of a Snowflake user without the configuration of Snowflake password in dbt Cloud. For more information on configuring a Snowflake OAuth connection in dbt Cloud, please see the docs on setting up Snowflake OAuth.

Configuration
To learn how to optimize performance with data platform-specific configurations in dbt Cloud, refer to Snowflake-specific configuration.