An external stage is the Snowflake object that encapsulates a secure connection to external cloud storage such as Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Storage. It stores the location (URL or bucket path) and, where required, credentials or role-based access configuration, and may also reference a file format. External stages are used as the source or target for COPY INTO operations when loading from or unloading to external storage.
An external table provides a logical SQL interface to data stored externally but relies on a stage for connectivity; it does not itself define the connection. A directory table exposes metadata about files stored in a stage, not the connection. A named file format defines parsing rules (type, delimiter, compression) but has no knowledge of or connection to a specific external storage location.