A materialized view in Snowflake is a pre-computed view that stores the result of a query for future use. Unlike standard views, which calculate the results dynamically whenever the view is accessed (and thus always reflects the most current data), materialized views save the query result at the time the view is refreshed. This can drastically improve query performance, especially for complex calculations or aggregations that would otherwise need to be computed on the fly. Materialized views are particularly useful for reports or dashboards that require rapid data retrieval but do not need up-to-the-minute data accuracy.