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Azure OpenAI 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
6.3
Azure OpenAI boosts productivity and cost savings, enabling rapid prototyping, scalability, and reducing workforce needs across sectors.
Sentiment score
5.0
IBM Watson Studio boosts efficiency, scalability, and lead conversions but seeks improved ROI relative to costs and quick market time.
The product offers a significant return on investment through its scalability and integration capabilities.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
My customers have seen returns on investment through increased efficiency, automated calculations, improved accuracy in pricing, and reduced staffing needs due to the automation.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.4
Microsoft’s customer service is professional and supportive, though access issues and AI-driven improvements are needed.
Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Watson Studio is praised for its effective and thorough support, often rated highly compared to Dialogflow.
Tickets can be prioritized for critical issues.
Data Engineer at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
It is important for organizations like Microsoft to apply OpenAI solutions within their own structures.
Associate consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the technical support of IBM Watson Studio a solid ten out of ten.
Data Governance System Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The community access is weak, which limits the ability to engage in discussions and find documentation and examples of similar cases effectively.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
The support quality depends on the SLA or the contract terms.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.3
Azure OpenAI is scalable for cloud apps but faces challenges with token limits and regional capacity for some users.
Sentiment score
7.1
IBM Watson Studio scales well, adapts to cloud platforms, supports integration, but may require high resources, affecting cost-efficiency.
The scalability depends on whether the application is multimodal or uses a single model.
Associate consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The API works fine, allowing me to scale indefinitely.
IT Manager at Pluris Midia
I have had a chance to communicate with the technical support of IBM Watson Studio, which has been responsive and helpful.
Data Governance System Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Watson Studio is very scalable.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
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.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Azure OpenAI is highly stable, reliable for enterprises, with occasional downtime and performance variances during peak usage.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Watson Studio is praised for its stability and reliability, with recent updates enhancing performance despite occasional large-scale calculation issues.
Overall, it is acceptable, but the major issue we currently face in this project is the hallucination problem.
AI Engineering Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The solution works fine, particularly for enterprises or even some small enterprises.
Associate consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Expertise in optimization is necessary to manage such issues effectively.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
I find IBM Watson Studio to be quite robust, with minimal downtime and great support regarding stability and reliability.
Data Governance System Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Azure OpenAI users seek improved integration, better support, diverse models, and cost-effective, reliable solutions with enhanced scalability and accuracy.
IBM Watson Studio needs a user-friendly interface, enhanced functionality, better support, and streamlined navigation to improve user experience.
They should consider bringing non-OpenAI models also into their fold, just as AWS Bedrock, which provides its own models and models from other commercial providers through the Bedrock service.
Senior Principal Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Expanding token limitations for scaling while ensuring concurrent user access is crucial.
Data Engineer at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Azure needs to work on its own model development and improve the integration of voice-to-text services.
Associate consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The platform is associated with a complicated setup process and demands heavy hardware, making it expensive to scale.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
Better documentation and more tutorials could enhance user experience with IBM Watson Studio.
Data Governance System Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
One area that could be improved is the backup and restoration of the database and the overall database configuration.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
 

Setup Cost

Azure OpenAI pricing is variable, with reports of both satisfaction and concerns compared to AWS and open-source options.
IBM Watson Studio's pricing varies, seen as reasonable by some, but costly for complex AI, with regional pricing challenges.
Recent iterations have increased token allowances, mitigating some challenges associated with concurrent user access at scale.
Data Engineer at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
The pricing is very good for handling various kinds of jobs.
IT Manager at Pluris Midia
IBM Watson Studio is considered rather expensive, with a rating of six or seven.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
 

Valuable Features

Azure OpenAI excels in precision, scalability, and ease of use, enhancing productivity with intuitive tools and GPT model integration.
IBM Watson Studio excels in automation, integration, and user-friendly tools for predictive analytics, machine learning, and big data projects.
The most valuable features are Azure AI Foundry; we use Azure AI Foundry to deploy various Azure OpenAI agents within Azure, such as Assistant, Azure OpenAI Assistant using Azure AI Foundry.
Senior Principal Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
OpenAI models help me create predictive analysis products and chat applications, enabling me to automate tasks and reduce the workforce needed for repetitive work, thereby streamlining operations.
Data Engineer at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
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.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
I believe the AutoAI features of IBM Watson Studio have significantly helped in my data projects by automating model selection and hyperparameter tuning.
Data Governance System Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It integrates well with other platforms and offers good scalability.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure OpenAI
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Watson Studio
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the AI Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Azure OpenAI is 6.5%, down from 15.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Studio is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure OpenAI6.5%
IBM Watson Studio1.5%
Other92.0%
AI Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

RC
AI Engineering Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Empowerment in regulatory content generation marred by inconsistency and hallucination issues
While it is good, we sometimes encounter hallucination issues, which is a significant concern. We are changing the prompt and fine-tuning it, but we still face some inconsistent behavior. We have specific instructions and keep the temperature very low to avoid overly generative responses, ensuring we receive specific answers from the particular source document without deviation; however, the results can sometimes vary. The main issue with Azure OpenAI is the inconsistency in output. We have a set template instruction, and it should generate within those parameters without any creativity because it's meant for regulatory authoring documents. The business provides the template instructions, and it should generate accordingly. While we have different prompts for various needs, sometimes it generates the correct results, and sometimes it does not, leading to inconsistency. For stability, based on the current model I am using, I would rate Azure OpenAI a 7 due to the ongoing hallucination issues.
AA
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
Automated processes improve efficiency while user interface and accessibility need enhancements
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 is the complexity involved in computer vision tasks. The integration capabilities have not significantly impacted workflow since there are simpler tools like Alteryx and Nine. The platform is associated with a complicated setup process and demands heavy hardware, making it expensive to scale. IBM should work on optimizing the user interface and enhancing the product's accessibility for medium and small enterprises.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure OpenAI?
The product is easy to integrate with our IT workflow.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure OpenAI?
In terms of pricing for Azure OpenAI, I would rate it as average compared to Gemini. Currently, Gemini is becoming increasingly popular, which prompts leadership to consider a switch primarily due ...
What needs improvement with Azure OpenAI?
I have not thought about how Azure OpenAI can be improved. I have not explored AI model customization in Azure OpenAI, but it's not a very common use case to do model customization. There are certa...
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?
I think IBM Watson Studio can be improved. I wish learning IBM Watson Studio could be easier and more gradual, as it is a complex task. Also, I think pricing is a bit high.
What is your primary use case for IBM Watson Studio?
My main use case for IBM Watson Studio is the end-to-end ML life cycle. A specific example of a project where I used IBM Watson Studio for the end-to-end machine learning life cycle is that I built...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Watson Studio, IBM Data Science Experience, Data Science Experience, DSx
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
GroupM, Accenture, Fifth Third Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure OpenAI vs. IBM Watson Studio and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.