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Amazon SageMaker vs IBM Watson Studio comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Amazon SageMaker offers varied ROI, improving efficiency and reducing costs with real-time fraud detection, despite long-term expense concerns.
Sentiment score
7.0
Organizations saw positive ROI from IBM Watson Studio due to improved efficiency, scalability, sales, and reduced staffing needs.
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.
The product offers a significant return on investment through its scalability and integration capabilities.
My customers have seen returns on investment through increased efficiency, automated calculations, improved accuracy in pricing, and reduced staffing needs due to the automation.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Amazon SageMaker support is praised for expertise, though some note slow responses and challenges for new users. Responses vary.
Sentiment score
7.2
IBM Watson Studio customer service is praised for efficiency and responsiveness, though support quality varies by subscription plan and community resources.
The technical support from AWS is excellent.
The response time is generally swift, usually within seven to eight hours.
The support is very good with well-trained engineers.
The support quality depends on the SLA or the contract terms.
The community access is weak, which limits the ability to engage in discussions and find documentation and examples of similar cases effectively.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Amazon SageMaker is highly scalable and flexible, but may need skilled personnel and resource adjustments for optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Watson Studio is scalable with excellent integration, but its resource intensity may increase costs for extensive scaling.
It works very well with large data sets from one terabyte to fifty terabytes.
The availability of GPU instances can be a challenge, requiring proper planning.
Amazon SageMaker is scalable and works well from an infrastructure perspective.
Watson Studio is very scalable.
I rate IBM Watson Studio seven out of ten for scalability because while it scales, it requires significant resources to do so, making it expensive compared to some competitors.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon SageMaker is praised for stability and reliability, though users face a learning curve and occasional UI changes.
Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Watson Studio is praised for stability and reliability, comparable to or better than competitors, with effective optimization for large tasks.
There are issues, but they are easily detectable and fixable, with smooth error handling.
The product has been stable and scalable.
I rate the stability of Amazon SageMaker between seven and eight.
Expertise in optimization is necessary to manage such issues effectively.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon SageMaker users desire improved pricing, interface, documentation, integration, and features for scalability, automation, security, and usability.
IBM Watson Studio needs a more intuitive interface, better support, and reduced setup complexity for wider adoption.
Having all documentation easily accessible on the front page of SageMaker would be a great improvement.
This would empower citizen data scientists to utilize the tool more effectively since many data scientists do not have a core development background.
Integration of the latest machine learning models like the new Amazon LLM models could enhance its capabilities.
IBM should work on optimizing the user interface and enhancing the product's accessibility for medium and small enterprises.
One area that could be improved is the backup and restoration of the database and the overall database configuration.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon SageMaker is costly but flexible, offering pay-as-you-go pricing and discounts, with charges only for compute resources.
IBM Watson Studio's pricing varies, offering a free light edition, yet considered expensive by some, especially in Africa.
It is considered value for money given its strong capabilities but could be more affordable for small-scale industries.
The pricing can be up to eight or nine out of ten, making it more expensive than some cloud alternatives yet more economical than on-premises setups.
The cost for small to medium instances is not very high.
IBM Watson Studio is considered rather expensive, with a rating of six or seven.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon SageMaker offers seamless AWS integration, intuitive tools, and scalability, supporting both beginner and expert machine learning projects.
IBM Watson Studio excels in automation, predictive analytics, and integration, offering comprehensive AI capabilities for diverse data-driven tasks.
SageMaker is fully managed, offers high availability, flexibility with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and MXNet, and comes with pre-trained algorithms for forecasting, anomaly detection, and more.
SageMaker supports building, training, and deploying AI models from scratch, which is crucial for my ML project.
These features facilitate rapid development and deployment of AI applications.
This capability saves a significant amount of time by automating processes that typically involve manual work, such as data cleaning, feature engineering, and predictive analytics.
It integrates well with other platforms and offers good scalability.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon SageMaker
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
3rd
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Watson Studio
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
10th
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Amazon SageMaker is 6.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Studio is 2.0%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Create innovative assistants with seamless data integration for large-scale projects
The various integration options available in Amazon SageMaker, such as Firehose for connecting to data pipelines, are simple to use. Tools like AWS Glue integrate well for data transformations. The Databricks integration aids data scientists and engineers. SageMaker is fully managed, offers high availability, flexibility with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and MXNet, and comes with pre-trained algorithms for forecasting, anomaly detection, and more.
Abilio Duarte - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly robust and well-documented platform that simplifies the complex world of AI
The main challenge lies in visibility and ease of use. Providing training sessions can be immensely helpful in helping users navigate and understand the tool's potential. This approach would empower users to explore and make the most of the tools and technologies at their disposal. Another area where IBM could enhance its offering is by providing more visibility to end users regarding the vast potential that Watson offers.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Amazon SageMaker?
We've had experience with unique ML projects using SageMaker. For example, we're developing a platform similar to ChatGPT that requires models. We utilize Amazon SageMaker to create endpoints for t...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Watson Studio?
IBM Watson Studio is considered rather expensive, with a rating of six or seven. The pricing could be optimized relative to the features and capabilities of the product.
What needs improvement with IBM Watson Studio?
IBM Watson Studio, while powerful, lacks user-friendliness. It is not easy to use, particularly for medium or small enterprises or less experienced staff. Another aspect that requires improvement i...
 

Also Known As

AWS SageMaker, SageMaker
Watson Studio, IBM Data Science Experience, Data Science Experience, DSx
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DigitalGlobe, Thomson Reuters Center for AI and Cognitive Computing, Hotels.com, GE Healthcare, Tinder, Intuit
GroupM, Accenture, Fifth Third Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SageMaker vs. IBM Watson Studio and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.