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Azure AI Foundry vs Azure OpenAI 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
Azure AI Foundry streamlines implementation, boosts efficiency, and delivers ROI, though financial impacts vary, especially for non-profits.
Sentiment score
6.3
Azure OpenAI boosts productivity and cost savings, enabling rapid prototyping, scalability, and reducing workforce needs across sectors.
Each one we've carefully measured ROI and been able to demonstrate significant ROI with them.
AI Practice Director at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
The biggest return on investment for me when using Azure AI Foundry is the savings in cost for implementing our own observability, visibility, evaluation, and building our own infrastructure to do proof of concepts.
Assistant VP, Architecture (Engineering & Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
The playground is where you can deploy the model and test, and guardrails serve as the protection mechanism.
Advisory Specialist Master at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.3
Azure AI Foundry support receives mixed reviews, citing both quick responses for some and delays and challenges for others.
Sentiment score
5.4
Microsoft’s customer service is professional and supportive, though access issues and AI-driven improvements are needed.
I evaluate customer service and technical support positively because we have the enterprise license, which allows us to prioritize serious issues, ensuring that Microsoft support responds quickly.
Manager, Data Science at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer service and technical support as a nine.
Senior VP, AI, Innovation & Architecture at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
I am receiving full support due to our partnership with Microsoft and because we are in the evaluation phase.
Sr Director at a tech vendor with 10,001+ 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
If the initial support personnel cannot resolve a query, it escalates to someone with more expertise.
Data Engineer at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.5
Azure AI Foundry offers seamless scalability, though GPU availability and organizational readiness can affect expansion and deployment.
Sentiment score
6.3
Azure OpenAI is scalable for cloud apps but faces challenges with token limits and regional capacity for some users.
Azure AI Foundry scales with the growing needs of my organization very well.
Senior VP, AI, Innovation & Architecture at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
The platform expands to all of our needs without us really having to do anything, so scalability is definitely there.
Staff Software Developer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I've had a couple of times where I've had to get to the VP level of Microsoft before I could get the capacity I needed for my customers.
AI Practice Director at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
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
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Azure AI Foundry is stable with high user satisfaction, despite occasional issues due to broader Azure service outages.
Sentiment score
7.1
Azure OpenAI is highly stable, reliable for enterprises, with occasional downtime and performance variances during peak usage.
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.
Directeur Des Ventes at Ited
Regarding stability and reliability, I've had zero downtime with Azure AI Foundry, and it helps fix itself.
IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would assess the stability and reliability of Azure AI Foundry as very good.
Senior VP, AI, Innovation & Architecture at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
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
 

Room For Improvement

Azure AI Foundry needs improved integration, usability, transparency, governance, and tool support to enhance user experience and adoption.
Azure OpenAI users seek improved integration, better support, diverse models, and cost-effective, reliable solutions with enhanced scalability and accuracy.
Providing data on the internal workings of Azure AI Foundry would help customers like us feel more comfortable adopting it.
Assistant VP, Architecture (Engineering & Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
What did not work well for us regarding Azure AI Foundry includes the security piece, being able to identify how to deploy to multiple regions, reducing latency, and managing tokens per minute.
Azure Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
With code, you know what the binary result is, but with prompting, it is a lot harder.
Senior Director, Data Orchestration Ai & Helix Practice Advisor at Connection
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
 

Setup Cost

Azure AI Foundry pricing varies by user, with mixed views on cost justification and competitiveness, prompting some to seek alternatives.
Azure OpenAI pricing is variable, with reports of both satisfaction and concerns compared to AWS and open-source options.
Regarding the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Azure AI Foundry, I would say it is fair, but I think it gets more expensive.
Assistant VP, Architecture (Engineering & Director at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Azure AI Foundry are very expensive, but still cheaper than hiring an additional position
Manager, Data Science at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
It was difficult to get an understanding of how we could model out our pricing and cost over time without talking to someone.
Senior VP, AI, Innovation & Architecture at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
The pricing is very good for handling various kinds of jobs.
IT Manager at Pluris Midia
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
 

Valuable Features

Azure AI Foundry streamlines AI integration with quick testing, centralized hosting, enhanced security, and efficient deployment features.
Azure OpenAI excels in precision, scalability, and ease of use, enhancing productivity with intuitive tools and GPT model integration.
Some examples of how its features have benefited my organization include ease of access, being able to see what's functioning, what's not functioning, why it's not functioning, and when it stopped functioning, and to maintain visibility on day-to-day operations.
IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The feature of being able to pick the right models has been the most beneficial for enhancing our customer service because some AI models are more expensive but slower, while others are faster and cheaper, allowing us to pick the right model for the right task that we are trying to solve.
Manager, Data Science at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The feature that has been the most beneficial for enhancing customer experience is the one that allows you to compare multiple models to one another and see how they perform against each other.
AI Practice Director at a consultancy with 201-500 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
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
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure AI Foundry
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Low-Code Development Platforms (10th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (11th), AI-Agent Builders (3rd)
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
 

Featured Reviews

Sudhakar Pyndi - PeerSpot reviewer
Data, Analytics & Ai Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Document processing has accelerated contract reviews and enabled rapid development of AI-driven supply chain solutions
With regard to security, compliance, or governance features in Azure AI Foundry, this is something that we have started looking into, primarily using Microsoft Purview for our governance, data governance. There is this new module called DSPM for AI, and we are exploring it while trying to operationalize it with different policies and so forth, but we're still not where we want to be on the governance, AI governance side. It's a process and a path, and we are trying to work through that right now. Azure AI Foundry can be improved from the governance perspective, as a lot can be done. The promising part is the recent announcement on the Foundry control plane. A couple of days back, there was an announcement regarding it bringing in some of the gaps that were on the platform, so it's a really positive direction in terms of where it's going. More governance is what is lacking, but the control plane will really play a big role there.
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.
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure AI Foundry?
I would need to ask my technical team about my experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Azure AI Foundry?
The platform's effect on my management of privacy, performance, and compliance across different regions is quite complex because Azure AI Foundry does not make it very clear how to deploy. We set u...
What is your primary use case for Azure AI Foundry?
My main use cases for Azure AI Foundry include deploying AI applications to perform document comparison, translation services, and a chat feature, helping the digital AI team at our company. Curren...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure AI Foundry vs. Azure OpenAI and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.