Snowflake (SNOW) NSO Exercise Calculator
Calculator · free · no signup · SNOWPlan your Snowflake NSO exercise (federal, state, FICA) and compare sell-vs-hold for long-term capital gains.
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your grant
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$199,080
Sell + invest wins by $20,783 over Hold 1 yr.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
Best payout| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $350,000 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$5,075 |
| Additional Medicare | −$3,150 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $18,573 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$5,219 |
| Net at year 1 | $199,080 |
Sell every share immediately; invest the after-tax cash at the market return for 1 yr, then liquidate. Diversified — no single-stock concentration risk.
Exercise + hold 1 yr
| Sale proceeds (year 1) | |
| LTCG tax (federal + state + NIIT) | $0 |
| Net at year 1 | $178,297 |
Sold 2,678 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 2,322 shares held 1 yr for LTCG.
Social Security + Medicare are payroll taxes (collectively called FICA) — they apply because you're exercising as a current employee.
Both columns are stated in year-1 dollars: sell-now proceeds compound at the market return and pay LTCG on the gain at year 1; any cash paid out of pocket on the hold side carries the same opportunity cost.
Net at year N — by hold period
Estimates only. Excludes AMT (NSOs do not trigger AMT), state-AMT, multi-state moves, and disqualifying-disposition edge cases. Not financial advice.
You calculated one NSO decision. The beta plans NSOs alongside RSUs and ISOs in a single multi-year tax plan.
Request beta access →About Snowflake
Snowflake (SNOW) is a public Data company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Menlo Park, CA. IPO'd Sep 16, 2020.
Last close: $238.32 per share (as of 2026-06-16).
Equity grants at Snowflake typically include incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), and restricted stock units (RSUs).
Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) data platform company founded in San Mateo, California, and headquartered in Menlo Park. It operates a platform that supports data analysis and simultaneous access to data sets with minimal latency. It operates on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Founded in 2012 by Benoit Dageville and Thierry Cruanes (former Oracle data architects) alongside Vectorwise co-founder Marcin Zukowski, Snowflake built a data warehouse designed natively for the cloud, running on top of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The company went public on the NYSE under ticker SNOW in September 2020, raising $3.4 billion in what stood as the largest software IPO on record, with Frank Slootman at the helm. Sridhar Ramaswamy (formerly of Google Ads and Neeva) took over as CEO in February 2024 and rebranded the platform as the AI Data Cloud, launching the Cortex managed AI service and extending native support for Apache Iceberg.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · snowflake.com · fortune.com
Equity comp at Snowflake
- RSUs use single-trigger vesting: shares become yours as each portion vests on schedule, and the value is taxed as ordinary income at that point. No IPO or acquisition is required.
Researched 2026-05-07.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Snowflake.
Use this calculator to estimate your Snowflake (SNOW) NSO exercise tax (federal, state, FICA), then compare selling now versus holding through the long-term capital gains threshold. Inputs are yours: grant terms, current price, your income, your state.
Example: at Snowflake (SNOW)'s last close of $238.32, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $71.5 strike creates a $834,100 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $225,207 and $375,345 depending on your bracket and state. The calculator above computes the exact figure for your situation and compares selling now vs. holding through the long-term capital-gains threshold.
All Snowflake tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Snowflake equity questions
- How is a Snowflake NSO exercise taxed?
- Exercising a non-qualified stock option (NSO) creates ordinary income on the bargain element (the price on the day you exercise minus your strike), subject to federal income tax, state income tax, and FICA. The calculator above computes that tax for your Snowflake grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Snowflake grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Snowflake typically takes the form of incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), and restricted stock units (RSUs). Incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax (AMT) when you exercise. Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest.
- Do Snowflake RSUs use double-trigger vesting?
- No. Snowflake restricted stock units (RSUs) use single-trigger vesting: each tranche becomes yours as it vests on schedule, taxed as ordinary income at that point, with no liquidity event required.
One piece of the puzzle.
OptionsAhoy plans your Snowflake equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.