Azure OpenAI Service vs. IBM watsonx.ai

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure OpenAI Service
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Azure OpenAI Service, a service from Microsoft's Azure suite available in preview, includes pre-generated AI models that enable users to apply advanced coding and language models to a variety of use cases, enabling new reasoning and comprehension capabilities for building applications. Users can apply these coding and language models to a variety of use cases, such as writing assistance, code generation, and reasoning over data.N/A
IBM watsonx.ai
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Watsonx.ai is part of the IBM watsonx platform that brings together new generative AI capabilities, powered by foundation models, and traditional machine learning into a studio spanning the AI lifecycle. Watsonx.ai can be used to train, validate, tune, and deploy generative AI, foundation models, and machine learning capabilities, and build AI applications with less time and data.
$0
Pricing
Azure OpenAI ServiceIBM watsonx.ai
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free Trial
$0
ML functionality (20 CUH limit /month); Inferencing (50,000 tokens / month)
Standard
$1,050
Monthly tier fee; additional usage based fees
Essentials
Contact Sales
Usage based fees
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure OpenAI ServiceIBM watsonx.ai
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for watsonx.ai includes: model inference per 1000 tokens and ML tools and ML runtimes based on capacity unit hours.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure OpenAI ServiceIBM watsonx.ai
Considered Both Products
Azure OpenAI Service

No answer on this topic

IBM watsonx.ai
Chose IBM watsonx.ai
IBM watsonx.ai has a far richer an more poowerful toolset for running scale AI services.
Chose IBM watsonx.ai
I think that the user interface is where IBM watsonx.ai shines the most compared to competitors.
There is a visual tool to build AI pipelines in a very easy and instinctive way, that anybody can master in no time I think.
Best Alternatives
Azure OpenAI ServiceIBM watsonx.ai
Small Businesses
InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS
Score 7.8 out of 10
InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Posit
Posit
Score 10.0 out of 10
InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Posit
Posit
Score 10.0 out of 10
Dataiku
Dataiku
Score 8.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure OpenAI ServiceIBM watsonx.ai
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(4 ratings)
9.0
(33 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
7.9
(6 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure OpenAI ServiceIBM watsonx.ai
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
If you're looking for a managed OpenAI API service, then Azure OpenAI Service is a good choice.
It's fully compatible with OpenAI API, has lots of models to choose from, lots of parameters to configure to suite your needs.
The documents are well maintained, with examples to get started.
You can also setup firewall to restrict access to the API to certain IP addresses, like those of your VPCs.
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IBM
I have built a code accelerator tool for one of the IBM product implementation. Although there was a heavy lifting at the start to train the model on specifics of the packaged solution library and ways of working; the efficacy of the model is astounding. Having said that, watsonx.ai is very well suited for customer service automation, healthcare data analytics, financial fraud detection, and sentiment analysis kind of projects. The Watsonx.ai look and feel is little confusing but I understand over a period of time , it will improve dramatically as well. I do feel that Watsonx.ai has certain limitations from cross-platform deployment flexibility. If an organization is deeply invested in a multi-cloud environment, Watson's integration on other cloud platforms may not be seamless comported to other AI platforms.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Generating SQL
  • Generating Images
  • Sensible Response
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IBM
  • It allows specialists to apply several base models for specific subtasks in the field of NLP.
  • Gives the availability of many models developed for AI enhancement for different solutions.
  • Has incorporated functionality for data governance and security to support access to AI tools by multiple users.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • The user interface is similar to the Azure, so it's bit laggy, they should improve it.
  • The chat models sometimes return nothing, I guess they are still testing them.
  • The models we use have quota limitation on tokens and number of requests.
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IBM
  • IBM watsonx.ai is expensive than other platforms.
  • Limited integraions though it has many but still some tools integrations not there for medical usecase
  • Its little difficult to learn as right now not many open reseouces
  • Community is not that strong to get any answer
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
I still don't have enough experience, but i have seen a lot of demos and i have made some real world scenarios and so far so long every thing looks fine. I was at IBM Think 2025 and IBM TechXchange 2025 and the labs were really usefull and simple to understand.
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Usability
Microsoft
I think it's a good product and appreciate the addition secure guard rails that running it in Azure provide. However, I still struggle at times to get to the right resources for support and region-based capacity can also be a challenge.
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IBM
I needed some time to understand the different parts of the web UI. It was slightly overwhelming in the beginning. However, after some time, it made sense, and I like the UI now. In terms of functionality, there are many useful features that make your life easy, like jumping to a section and giving me a deployment space to deploy my models easily.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
I still don't have enough experience, but i have seen a lot of demos and i have made some real world scenarios and so far so long every thing looks fine. I was at IBM Think 2025 and IBM TechXchange 2025 and the labs were really usefull and simple to understand.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
1. Open AI is best at giving accurate answers. 2. It is secure and more trustworthy 3. Most of our client using Azure cloud so it becomes go to choice for them. 4. Scalable as it handles 1000s of request per minute. 5. SDKs are easy to use and well documented.
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IBM
IBM watsonx.ai has been far superior to that of Chat GPT AI. the UI elements prompt responses and overall execution of the AI was much better and more accurate compared to the competition. I can not recommend using this platform enough. Great job IBM. I hope the team behind this project continues to grow and prosper.
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
I still don't have enough experience, but i have seen a lot of demos and i have made some real world scenarios and so far so long every thing looks fine. I was at IBM Think 2025 and IBM TechXchange 2025 and the labs were really usefull and simple to understand.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Our test group of 100 people created more than 200 conversations within the first day
  • People were excited & asked to be included to the test group once words spread that we have an internal ChatGPT portal
  • People started to create & share their own assistants (prompt engineering) for various purposes like code review, marketing, email, etc.
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IBM
  • Time saving to set up the infrastructure - without watsonx.ai we would have had to set up everything individually
  • The first point translates directly into cost savings
  • The compliance aspect was a game changer for us and provided us with the confidence to focus all our efforts only on IBM watsonx.ai
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ScreenShots

IBM watsonx.ai Screenshots

Screenshot of the foundation models available in watsonx.ai. Clients have access to IBM selected open source models from Hugging Face, as well as other third-party models, and a family of IBM-developed foundation models of different sizes and architectures.Screenshot of the Prompt Lab in watsonx.ai, where AI builders can work with foundation models and build prompts using prompt engineering techniques in watsonx.ai to support a range of Natural Language Processing (NLP) type tasks.Screenshot of the Tuning Studio in watsonx.ai, where AI builders can tune foundation models with labeled data for better performance and accuracy.Screenshot of the data science toolkit in watsonx.ai where AI builders can build machine learning models automatically with model training, development, visual modeling, and synthetic data generation.