<p>Snow is one of the most critical variables in hydrology and water resources management which plays a significant role in the environment and human life. However, measuring this vital variable is challenging as it mostly occurs in difficult-to-access areas. In this study, the performance of the ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) and Nasa Earth Observation (NEO) satellites in detecting snow water equivalent (SWE) was examined for January, February, March, and December in Iran. The findings showed that the overall performance of ERA-5 was better than NEO, despite of both satellites overestimating the SWE values compared to observational data. The overestimation was most pronounced in December and for ERA-5. In addition, temporal analysis showed that the R² values for ERA-5 and NEO in March were 0.204 and 0.4664, respectively. The results also indicated that the correlation between ERA-5 and NEO and observational data was the highest in northwest and west of the country with 0.7 and 0.6, respectively. Moreover, the RMSE value for both satellites achieved the lowest in March, with less than 5.0. It is noteworthy that the satellites performed best at latitudes between 32° and 34° and longitudes between 50° and 52°, with higher correlation values in these regions compared to others. In addition, ERA-5 outperformed NEO in elevations of 1600–1900&#xa0;m. In general, this study suggested that the overall performance of ERA-5 in detecting SWE in Iran was better than NEO. The findings of this study can be applied to the fields of water resource management, agriculture, flood management, and hydrology.</p>