watsonx.ai Runtime service plans

You use watsonx.ai Runtime resources, which are measured in capacity unit hours (CUH), when you train AutoAI models, run machine learning models, or score deployed models. You use watsonx.ai Runtime resources, measured by tokens consumed or at an hourly rate, when you run inferencing services with foundation models. This topic describes the various plans you can choose, what services are included, and how computing resources are calculated.

Note: The watsonx.ai Runtime service was formerly known as the Watson Machine Learning service.

If you are using both watsonx and Cloud Pak for Data as a Service in your account, you can switch between the two platforms. For details, see Comparison of IBM watsonx and Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.

Choosing a watsonx.ai Runtime plan

watsonx.ai Runtime plans govern how you are billed for models you train and deploy with watsonx.ai Runtime and for prompts you use with foundation models. You must select a plan for each watsonx.ai Runtime instance you create.

Select one of the following plans based on your needs:

Lite plan
A free plan with limited capacity. Choose the Lite plan if you are evaluating watsonx.ai Runtime and want to try out the capabilities. The Lite plan does not support running a foundation model tuning experiment on watsonx.
Essentials plan
A pay-as-you-go plan that gives you the flexibility to build, deploy, and manage models to match your needs.
Standard plan
A high-capacity enterprise plan that is designed to support all AI needs of an organization. The Standard plan incurs a monthly instance fee of $1,110 USD per month that includes a block of 2500 capacity unit hours (CUH). Any CUH usage above this amount and all other usage is metered on a pay-as-you-go basis at the Standard plan rate.
Note: The instance fee for the watsonx.ai Runtime Standard plan is billed regardless of CUH usage. For example, if you only consume resource units, you are still charged the instance fee. The fee is pro-rated if the plan is canceled.

For plan details and pricing, see IBM Cloud catalog: watsonx.ai Runtime.

The available features with each plan depend on the region where you are provisioning the service from the IBM Cloud catalog. See Regional availability of services and features.

The Lite plan provides enough free resources for you to evaluate the capabilities of watsonx.ai. You can then choose a paid plan that matches the needs of your organization, based on plan features and capacity.

Table 1. Differences between watsonx.ai Runtime plan limits and costs
Plan features Lite Essentials Standard
watsonx.ai Runtime usage in CUH 20 CUH per month CUH billing based on CUH rate multiplied by hours of consumption 2500 CUH per month
Max parallel Decision Optimization batch jobs per deployment 2 5 100
Deployment jobs retained per space 100 1000 3000
Deployment time to idle 1 day 3 days 3 days

Note: If you upgrade your instance from Essentials to Standard, you cannot revert to an Essentials plan. You must create an instance with a new plan. Similarly, if you upgrade from Lite to Essentials or from Lite to Standard, you cannot downgrade to Lite and must create an instance with a new plan.

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