Does the VARIANT data type impose a 16MB size limit on individual rows?

• A. True
• B. False
• C. Not applicable
• D. It depends on the encoding

Answer: (A)

VARIANT stores semi-structured data such as JSON, and Snowflake enforces a hard size cap on a single VARIANT value: 16 MB. That means each VARIANT value must be 16 MB or smaller; trying to store more will fail. This limit is per value, so a row with multiple VARIANT columns each have their own 16 MB cap, and if you have one VARIANT per row it effectively constrains that row’s VARIANT content to 16 MB. The limit is about the stored value size, not the encoding, so encoding won’t change this boundary.