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Amazon SageMaker vs IBM Watson Machine Learning comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon SageMaker
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (4th)
IBM Watson Machine Learning
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the AI Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Amazon SageMaker is 2.8%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Machine Learning is 1.6%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon SageMaker2.8%
IBM Watson Machine Learning1.6%
Other95.6%
AI Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

NeerajPokala - PeerSpot reviewer
Machine Learning Engineer at Macquarie Group
Automation has transformed document review and reduces manual effort in financial workflows
There will be many features in Amazon SageMaker itself, but we don't know whether the feature is there or not, particularly the documentation part. Whatever the new releases will be, they will not post very fast. It is very easy to deploy Amazon SageMaker. The documentation is also very good. It is good because we are able to collaborate with our notebooks. At a time we can develop simultaneously and work on different use cases in the same notebook itself.
reviewer2319402 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Business Development at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Good fit for medium-sized companies, and offers good AutoML feature
In future releases, I would like to see a more flexible environment. It's a good product for customization and developing products. But when we need the most control over the delivery, Watson isn't the best. We can't fix everything because we're working with a machine that's creating a product. And the ability to go in-depth and tweak our model easily would be really nice.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"They are doing a good job of evolving."
"I have seen a return on investment, probably a factor of four or five."
"The most valuable features are the ability to store artifacts and gather reports and measures from experiments."
"The feature I found most valuable is the data catalog, as it assists with the lineage of data through the preparation pipeline."
"The return on investment varies by use case and offers significant value in revenue increases and cost saving capabilities, especially in real time fraud detection and targeted advertisements."
"I have contacted the solution's technical support, and they were really good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"Amazon SageMaker definitely provides ROI."
"Allows you to create API endpoints."
"We can enable and change developer productivity with artificial intelligence-recommended code based on natural language input or exciting source code."
"We have seen an ROI, as it has improved self-service and customer satisfaction."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution's the cost and human labor savings."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
"I was particularly interested in trying the AutoML feature to see how it handles data and proposes new models. The variety of models it provides is impressive."
"The solution is very valuable to our organization due to the fact that we can work on it as a workflow."
"I like the whole concept of using Watson; it has a lot of good features and we find the image classification very useful."
 

Cons

"The documentation must be made clearer and more user-friendly."
"When starting a new session, the waiting time can be quite long, ranging from two to five minutes."
"I would suggest that Amazon SageMaker provide free slots to allow customers to practice, such as a free slot to try out working with a Sandbox."
"The solution needs to be cheaper since it now charges per document for extraction."
"Scalability to handle big data can be improved by making integration with networks such as Hadoop and Apache Spark easier."
"The solution is complex to use."
"Comparatively, GCP offers very low cost when compared to Amazon SageMaker. People are moving from Amazon SageMaker to GCP because of the cost constraints."
"Improvement is needed in the no-code and low-code capabilities of Amazon SageMaker."
"The supporting language is limited, and other languages could be added."
"Honestly, I haven't seen any comparative report that has run the same data through two different artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities to get something out of it. I would love to see that."
"They should add more GPU processing power to improve performance, especially when dealing with large amounts of data."
"However, early on, they relied heavily on building out these massive reference tables. That was a ton of the work that had to be done."
"Scaling is limited in some use cases. They need to make it easier to expand in all aspects."
"In future releases, I would like to see a more flexible environment."
"If I consider how we want to use it in our organization, certain areas of improvement can be addressed. For instance, we want to use it with Generative AI, not like ChatGPT, but in a way intended for industrial use."
"Sometimes training the model is difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is the lowest price, and ten is the highest price. The solution is priced reasonably. There is no additional cost to be paid in excess of the standard licensing fees."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"The product is expensive."
"Amazon SageMaker is a very expensive product."
"The support costs are 10% of the Amazon fees and it comes by default."
"There is no license required for the solution since you can use it on demand."
"The solution is relatively cheaper."
"The pricing is complicated as it is based on what kind of machines you are using, the type of storage, and the kind of computation."
"The pricing model is good."
"I've only been using the free tier, but it's quite competitive on a service basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
10%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon SageMaker?
If you manage it effectively, their pricing is reasonable. It's similar to anything in the cloud; if you don't manage it properly, it can be expensive, but if you do, it's fine.
What needs improvement with Amazon SageMaker?
It takes some work. We need to refer to the documentation. The documentation is good regarding what other providers we are able to connect with. Out of five, I can say 3.5.
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Also Known As

AWS SageMaker, SageMaker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DigitalGlobe, Thomson Reuters Center for AI and Cognitive Computing, Hotels.com, GE Healthcare, Tinder, Intuit
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SageMaker vs. IBM Watson Machine Learning and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.