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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
5.8
IBM Watson Studio boosts efficiency and accuracy, reduces staffing, enhances conversion rates, and offers integration benefits, despite its cost.
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.
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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
6.9
Amazon SageMaker support is praised for expertise, though some note slow responses and challenges for new users. Responses vary.
Sentiment score
6.5
IBM Watson Studio support is praised for responsiveness, but quality varies by plan and community access is limited.
The technical support from AWS is excellent.
Lead Consultant at Saama
The support is very good with well-trained engineers.
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The response time is generally swift, usually within seven to eight hours.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
The support quality depends on the SLA or the contract terms.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
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
 

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
7.0
IBM Watson Studio is scalable and flexible, supporting diverse needs with high costs but seamless integration and comprehensive features.
It works very well with large data sets from one terabyte to fifty terabytes.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
The availability of GPU instances can be a challenge, requiring proper planning.
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon SageMaker is scalable and works well from an infrastructure perspective.
Lead Consultant at Saama
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
7.6
Amazon SageMaker is praised for stability and reliability, though users face a learning curve and occasional UI changes.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Watson Studio is robust and reliable, performing well over time, particularly in private cloud environments, with consistent stability.
There are issues, but they are easily detectable and fixable, with smooth error handling.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
The product has been stable and scalable.
Data Lake and MLOps Lead at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
I rate the stability of Amazon SageMaker between seven and eight.
Lead Consultant at Saama
Expertise in optimization is necessary to manage such issues effectively.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon SageMaker users desire improved pricing, interface, documentation, integration, and features for scalability, automation, security, and usability.
IBM Watson Studio users want improved web functionality, modular structure, better navigation, enhanced support, and adaptable pricing for enterprises.
Having all documentation easily accessible on the front page of SageMaker would be a great improvement.
AWS & Azure Engineer at a media company with 11-50 employees
Integration of the latest machine learning models like the new Amazon LLM models could enhance its capabilities.
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This would empower citizen data scientists to utilize the tool more effectively since many data scientists do not have a core development background.
Lead Consultant at Saama
The platform is associated with a complicated setup process and demands heavy hardware, making it expensive to scale.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
One area that could be improved is the backup and restoration of the database and the overall database configuration.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
I wish learning IBM Watson Studio could be easier and more gradual, as it is a complex task.
Software Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

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 is seen as reasonable but can be expensive, affecting competitiveness and regional deployments.
The pricing is high, around an eight.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
For a single user, prices might be high yet could be cheaper for user-managed services compared to AWS-managed services.
Lead Consultant at Saama
The cost for small to medium instances is not very high.
AWS & Azure Engineer at a media company with 11-50 employees
IBM Watson Studio is considered rather expensive, with a rating of six or seven.
Director, Channel and Alliances at Akinon
 

Valuable Features

Amazon SageMaker offers seamless AWS integration, intuitive tools, and scalability, supporting both beginner and expert machine learning projects.
IBM Watson Studio offers automation, AI integration, scalability, and robust data modeling, ideal for large organizations with multi-cloud support.
The most valuable features include the ML operations that allow for designing, deploying, testing, and evaluating models.
Senior Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This allows monitoring and performance grading, as I instantly know when someone has a bad call.
President & CEO at Y12
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.
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
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
The best features IBM Watson Studio offers are that it is good for big and complex organizations, it is multi-cloud, it has an on-prem facility, and it also has strong visual tools.
Software Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
It integrates well with other platforms and offers good scalability.
Process Automation Lead at CONDIACTOR
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon SageMaker
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
2nd
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
4th
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
18th
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Amazon SageMaker is 4.6%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Studio is 2.2%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon SageMaker4.6%
IBM Watson Studio2.2%
Other93.2%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Python AWS & AI Expert at a tech consulting company
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.
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
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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?
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

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: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.