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The snake is the most ambiguous symbol in the dream world: danger in one tradition, healing and wisdom in the next. What your snake dream means depends almost entirely on context: what the snake did, where it was, and what you felt.
Being bitten. The classic reading is a wake-up call: something or someone in your waking life has struck or is about to, and the dream will not let you keep ignoring it. Where the bite lands is often read too: the hand as work or trust, the leg as your foundation or progress.
Being chased by a snake. Avoidance: a threat or a conversation you keep outrunning. This overlaps with the general being chased dream, with the snake adding a flavor of betrayal or hidden motive.
A snake in your house. The house usually reads as yourself or your private life; a snake inside it suggests the tension is close to home: family, partner, or something in your own behavior you distrust.
A hidden snake, or one that watches. Distrust of someone in your circle: the phrase snake in the grass lives in dreams too. Ask yourself who you were with in the dream, and who you thought of first on waking.
A dead snake. Usually positive: a threat that has passed, a toxic influence ending, or the close of a period you survived.
Many snakes. Feeling surrounded: multiple stressors or several people you cannot quite trust at once. Often simply a high-stress season made visible.
The snake is not only a threat symbol. It sheds its skin, which made it an emblem of renewal and healing across cultures: the staff of Asclepius, symbol of medicine to this day, carries a snake. Jungian interpretation often reads the snake as transformation: something old in you dying so something new can grow, which is uncomfortable exactly the way snake dreams are. If your snake dream came during a major life change, the transformation reading usually fits better than the danger reading.
Feeling is the tiebreaker. Terror points toward threat and distrust; fascination or calm points toward change and healing. If the dream repeats or stays with you, a dream interpreter can read it against your actual situation, which is where a snake dream finally gives up its meaning.
Not by default. Snakes symbolize danger and distrust in some readings and healing and renewal in others. The dream's feeling and your current life decide which reading fits.
Traditionally a wake-up call: an issue you have been ignoring demanding attention. Many interpreters also read the location of the bite for the life area involved.
A calm or watching snake often points at quiet distrust of someone nearby, or at a change happening slowly in you. A dead snake usually reads as a threat that has passed.
Snake dreams are commonly reported in pregnancy. Vivid dreaming increases and transformation symbolism fits a body and life in change; it is not read as a warning about the baby.