AWS Bedrock vs Azure OpenAI: 2026 comparison

Side-by-side

AWS Bedrock vs Azure OpenAI — at a glance

Dimension	AWS Bedrock	Azure OpenAI
Flagship model	Claude Sonnet 4.5 on Bedrock	GPT-4o on Azure
Context window	200K	128K
Input price (per 1M tok)	Anthropic Bedrock pricing (~$3 / $15)	Azure OpenAI pricing (~$2.50 / $10)
Output price (per 1M tok)	(matches Anthropic)	(matches OpenAI)
Latency (typical)	~500-700ms TTFT	~400-600ms TTFT
Free tier	AWS Free Tier	Azure Free Tier
Best for	Multi-model catalog (Claude, Llama, Mistral, Titan), AWS-native compliance	OpenAI on enterprise infra, MS Defender + Purview, VNet integration

When to choose which

Pick AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI?

When to choose AWS Bedrock

Choose AWS Bedrock when your team is already on AWS and you want a multi-vendor model marketplace under one IAM perimeter. Bedrock fronts Anthropic Claude, Meta Llama, Mistral, Cohere, AI21, Stability and Amazon's own Titan/Nova models — all billed through your AWS account, eligible for committed-use discounts, and integrated with KMS, VPC endpoints, CloudWatch, and PrivateLink. For regulated workloads (HIPAA, GovCloud, IL5) Bedrock has the broadest BAA coverage.

Anthropic Claude, Llama, Mistral, Cohere, Titan all in one place
AWS billing, IAM, KMS, VPC endpoints, PrivateLink
HIPAA / GovCloud / IL5 eligibility (broadest of any cloud)
Knowledge Bases (managed RAG) and Agents built-in
Pricing = provider rate + ~10-15% AWS infrastructure margin

When to choose Azure OpenAI

Choose Azure OpenAI when your stack is Microsoft-first and you want the canonical OpenAI models (GPT-4o, GPT-4 Turbo, o1) with enterprise-grade SLAs, content filters, and regional data residency. Azure OpenAI is the only path to OpenAI models with SOC2 / ISO 27001 / HIPAA / FedRAMP High under a single Microsoft contract. Pricing matches OpenAI list ($2.50 / $10 for GPT-4o) but Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) make latency and throughput deterministic.

GPT-4o, o1, GPT-4 Turbo with Microsoft SLAs
Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) for deterministic latency
FedRAMP High, HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC2 included
Regional data residency (US, EU, UK, JP, etc.)
Tight integration with Entra ID, Sentinel, Defender

Why not both?

Run AWS Bedrock and Azure OpenAI side-by-side

VerticalAPI fronts both AWS Bedrock and Azure OpenAI through the same OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Drop in your AWS keys or Azure deployment URL, route per-request, keep your enterprise compliance perimeter intact — and add cost / latency dashboards across both clouds. Zero markup on tokens; you pay AWS and Azure directly.

from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.verticalapi.com/v1", api_key="vapi_...")

# AWS Bedrock
resp_x = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="bedrock/anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    extra_headers={"X-Provider-Key": "sk-..."},
)

# Azure OpenAI — same SDK, same client, different model + key
resp_y = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="azure/gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    extra_headers={"X-Provider-Key": "..."},
)

Try VerticalAPI free →

VerticalAPI verdict

Use AWS Bedrock when you want one cloud-native endpoint that fans out to Claude, Llama, Mistral, Titan and Cohere — and your data stack is already on AWS. Use Azure OpenAI when you need GPT-4o specifically on enterprise infrastructure with Microsoft's compliance posture (Defender, Purview, VNet, AAD). VerticalAPI can BYOK to both — IAM credentials for Bedrock, resource keys + endpoint for Azure — and route on a per-request basis.

Get started — BYOK both providers →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is the main difference between AWS Bedrock and Azure OpenAI?

AWS Bedrock is a multi-model marketplace: it serves Anthropic Claude, Meta Llama, Mistral, Cohere, Amazon Titan and Nova, and others through one API inside your AWS account. Azure OpenAI is single-vendor: it only serves OpenAI models (GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o1) under Microsoft's enterprise contract. Bedrock optimizes for model variety; Azure OpenAI optimizes for deep Microsoft integration and consistency.

Can I run Claude or Llama on Azure OpenAI?

No. Azure OpenAI only hosts OpenAI models. Claude is available through AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, or Anthropic's own API. Llama is available through Bedrock, Vertex, Azure AI Foundry (a separate service from Azure OpenAI), Groq, Cerebras, and self-hosted infrastructure.

How does pricing compare?

Both bill per 1M tokens at rates close to each provider's direct API list price. Bedrock prices vary by model (Claude Sonnet 4.5 is approximately $3 / $15 input/output, Llama 3.3 70B around $0.72 / $0.72). Azure OpenAI's GPT-4o is approximately $2.50 / $10. Both also offer provisioned throughput (PTU on Azure, Provisioned Throughput on Bedrock) for predictable latency at a higher fixed cost.

Which has better data residency and compliance?

Both pin inference to a specific region (us-east-1, eu-west-1, francecentral, swedencentral, etc.) and inherit the underlying cloud's SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and EU compliance posture. Choose by alignment with existing data: if your data lake is in AWS, Bedrock's same-region inference avoids cross-cloud egress; if you're on Microsoft 365 and Azure AD, Azure OpenAI is simpler.

Can I federate Bedrock and Azure OpenAI behind one endpoint?

Yes. VerticalAPI exposes both as OpenAI-compatible models on a single endpoint at https://api.verticalapi.com/v1. You bring your AWS access keys and Azure OpenAI deployment keys as BYOK credentials. Tokens are billed by AWS and Microsoft to your existing cloud contract; VerticalAPI adds zero markup and only logs metadata (latency, token counts) unless replay logging is explicitly enabled.

Caveats

Limitations of this comparison

Both clouds revise model availability, regional rollouts, and pricing several times per year; figures here reflect mid-2026 published rates.
Bedrock model availability differs by region. Newer Anthropic and Mistral releases often land in us-east-1 and us-west-2 first and reach EU regions weeks later.
Azure OpenAI quota allocation is per-deployment and per-region; reaching production-scale throughput usually requires PTU (provisioned throughput units), which is priced very differently from pay-as-you-go.
Data residency guarantees depend on the specific service tier, region pairing, and contract clauses; default behavior is not the same as a contractual guarantee.
This page does not benchmark latency or quality; both depend heavily on chosen model, region, prompt length, and load.

Outlook

What may change in 12-24 months

Bedrock is likely to keep adding frontier models (open-weights and proprietary) and exposing more fine-tuning and distillation options.
Azure is expected to keep narrowing the gap by promoting Azure AI Foundry as the multi-model layer alongside Azure OpenAI, blurring the single-vendor distinction.
Both will continue rolling out EU sovereign options (EU Data Boundary, Bedrock EU isolated regions) under tightening AI Act and data-residency rules.
OpenAI-compatible APIs (already present on both, partially) will become the universal default, making cross-cloud model swaps a one-line change.

Keep reading