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Azure OpenAI vs watsonx.ai comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Azure OpenAI
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
watsonx.ai
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
26th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the AI Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Azure OpenAI is 6.5%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of watsonx.ai is 0.6%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure OpenAI6.5%
watsonx.ai0.6%
Other92.9%
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.
AmerKhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Director - Head of Solution Engineering at Osol tech (Private) Limited
Experience gains better customer interactions and user-friendliness but requires more efficient agent development
The development toolkit itself and the engine that supported the agent development was flexible. The features include support for RAG and support for generative AI. What we're looking to do is provide a human-like interface where natural language comes into play to serve HR data. Our users interact in a narrative fashion and get their queries answered. It has increased our serving of HR requests by 30%. It is user friendly, and our user base was able to work with it quite conveniently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy to set up and easy to use; there is no issue with that."
"OpenAI's models are more mature than Watson's. They offer a wider range of features and provide richer outputs."
"Azure OpenAI is used as chat services, allowing me to replace human tasks with analytical capabilities."
"The most valuable features include analyzing comments and preparing requests for customers, making emails easier and faster."
"Azure OpenAI is easy to use because the endpoints are created, and we just need to pass our parameters and info."
"The product is easy to integrate with our IT workflow."
"The document intelligence feature has significantly aided in our operations, facilitating the creation of descriptive content."
"Azure's integration with OpenAI's GPT is beneficial as well, especially for text generation tasks."
"The development toolkit itself and the engine that supported the agent development was flexible."
 

Cons

"One major drawback of Azure OpenAI is its availability, as it's not consistently accessible for effective use."
"The fine-tuning of models with the use of Azure OpenAI is an area with certain shortcomings currently, and it can be considered for improvement in the future."
"I faced one issue with Azure OpenAI: My customer wanted more clarity on the pricing. They were not able to get proper answers from the documentation or the pricing calculator. I suggest that Microsoft maintain standardization in the pricing details published in the documentation and the pricing calculator."
"Azure OpenAI is not available in all regions, and its technical support should be improved."
"In the next release, they could enhance the product's features for even greater usability and efficiency."
"The product must improve its dashboards."
"In terms of scalability, I would rate it nine for technical ability to expand. However, from a cost perspective, I would rate it five because it is too costly."
"Azure OpenAI should use more specific sources like academic articles because sometimes the source can't be found."
"The platform and toolkit that we use to develop agents could benefit from improvements from a user-friendliness perspective."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While the product meets our business requirements well, I consider it relatively expensive, especially for individual users like myself."
"If you consider the long-term aspect of any project, Azure OpenAI is a costly solution."
"I'm uncertain about the licensing, specifically the pricing. This falls under the purview of other teams, particularly the sales teams. I am not informed about the pricing details."
"We started with monthly payments, but we plan to switch to yearly billing once we've stabilized our solution."
"Regarding pricing and licensing, it's a bit complex due to the minimum purchase requirement for PTO units. We're evaluating the best approach between PTE and pay-as-you-go models. Our organization is cautious about committing to PTE due to the fixed bandwidth reservation, while pay-as-you-go doesn't offer enough flexibility. We're discussing these matters with legal teams to ensure compliance and data security."
"The tool costs around 20 dollars a month."
"The pricing is acceptable, and it's delivering good value for the results and outcomes we need."
"The cost is quite high and fixed."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise19
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with watsonx.ai?
Improving on the development toolkit would help. The platform and toolkit that we use to develop agents could benefit from improvements from a user-friendliness perspective. Making it more user-fri...
What is your primary use case for watsonx.ai?
We are looking to develop HR agents on it, HR-based bots. We integrated it with our HR system, HRIS.
What advice do you have for others considering watsonx.ai?
This solution is highly recommended. On a scale of 1-10, I rate watsonx.ai a seven out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Hugging Face, Google and others in AI Development Platforms. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.