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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
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
watsonx.ai
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
25th
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 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 watsonx.ai is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure OpenAI6.5%
watsonx.ai0.5%
Other93.0%
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.
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

"Two aspects I appreciate are the turnaround time and ease of use. As it's a managed service, the quick turnaround is beneficial, and the simple interface makes it easy to work with. Performance and scalability are also strong points since you can scale as needed."
"The product is easy to integrate with our IT workflow."
"Azure OpenAI is very easy to use instead of AWS services."
"I would rate it a nine out of ten."
"Our clients are interested in building knowledge bases, particularly in child welfare. In this domain, we focus on supporting caseworkers by compiling and organizing relevant information. This information is then stored in a database using a query. The database generates summaries and reminders for specific actions and even facilitates sending emails to parents or other relevant parties. The system's complexity is tailored to the specific needs of child welfare cases. Additionally, we're exploring opportunities to assist a healthcare organization. Specifically, we're working on streamlining the process of filling out forms required for insurance claims. This effort aims to ensure that hospitals can receive funding or payment for the care they provide."
"The AI search functionality is particularly effective, as it creates summaries from data."
"The most crucial aspect is the conversational capability, where you can simply ask questions, and it provides answers based on your content and documents, particularly tailored to your specific environment."
"My goal was to create an experience where project managers don't have to read through entire documents. Instead, they can ask a question and receive relevant point analysis. This analysis identifies the document and specific section where the information resides. Previously, users had to rely on these document references. Now, Azure OpenAI enhances the experience by providing the answer directly in the user's own language, relevant to their context."
"The development toolkit itself and the engine that supported the agent development was flexible."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to accommodate smaller companies."
"One area for improvement is providing more flexibility in configuration and connectivity with external tools."
"Latency performance is a major part. And I'm seeking support for multiple models that handle text, images, videos, and voice. I'm from India, and I'm looking for more support in Indian languages. There are 18 official languages and many more unofficial. We need support for these languages, especially in voice moderation, which is not yet available."
"The product must improve its dashboards."
"The product features themselves are fine. However, with Microsoft scaling the service so much, the support structure needs to keep pace. When solving complex issues, the process of interacting with Microsoft can be quite time-consuming."
"Sometimes, the responses are repetitive."
"Since we don't train the model on our data, it's a struggle to ensure OpenAI answers questions exclusively from our data. During user testing, we found ways to make the system provide answers from outside sources."
"Azure OpenAI will be expensive if you want to implement it as a permanent solution for a customer."
"The platform and toolkit that we use to develop agents could benefit from improvements from a user-friendliness perspective."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is normal worldwide but expensive in Turkey because Turkey's currency is different."
"While the product meets our business requirements well, I consider it relatively expensive, especially for individual users like myself."
"The cost structure depends on the volume of data processed and the computational resources required."
"The pricing is acceptable, and it's delivering good value for the results and outcomes we need."
"The solution's pricing depends on the services you will deploy."
"The tool costs around 20 dollars a month."
"I rate the product pricing six out of ten."
"According to the negotiations taking place and the contract, there is a need to make either monthly or yearly payments to use the solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
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: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.