Snowflake reader accounts let a provider share data with consumers who do not maintain their own Snowflake account. The provider remains responsible for the reader account's usage and associated charges.
Reader accounts can consume warehouse credits when consumers run queries. The provider can also incur storage, data transfer, and serverless service charges associated with the shared environment.
READER_ACCOUNT_USAGE views provide usage records for reader accounts. Resource monitors can help limit warehouse consumption, while tags and account usage reports support chargeback or showback to the consumer.
The cost model should include consumer query volume, warehouse size, idle time, and retention. A reader account with a small number of large queries can cost more than one with many short queries. Snowflake documents reader accounts and their usage views.