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Together AI vs Azure OpenAI Service

A feature-by-feature comparison of Together AI and Azure OpenAI Service across 7 capability categories.

First tool

Try Together AI (opens in a new tab)

Second tool

Try Azure OpenAI Service (opens in a new tab)

Modalities — Azure OpenAI Service Wins

Modalities: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
Text Input	Yes, requires free plan. Serverless inference and playground take chat/completions text.	Yes, requires plus plan. Chat Completions and Responses APIs on deployed OpenAI models.
Image Upload / Vision	Unknown. Vision on hosted models was not confirmed on the marketing homepage.	Yes, requires plus plan. GPT-4o and later chat models on Azure accept text and images.
Image Generation	Unknown. Together is inference/GPU cloud. Image model hosting was not on the homepage snippet.	Yes, requires plus plan. Azure OpenAI lists image generation models in the Foundry catalog.
Voice Mode	No. Not a conversational voice product.	Partial. GPT-4o audio models support speech-in/speech-out; that is an API capability, not a consumer voice app.
Video Understanding	No. Not a video-analysis product.	Unknown. Video understanding vs Sora video generation was not separated in the catalog page we read.
Video Generation	No. Not a video generation product.	Yes, requires plus plan. Azure OpenAI catalog includes Sora and a video generation model.
File Upload (PDF, DOCX)	No. Chat/completions, not a PDF uploader.	Yes, requires plus plan. Files API and Assistants/vector store accept uploaded customer data.
Code Execution	Yes, requires plus plan. Code sandboxes are listed on the product page.	Unknown. Code interpreter on Azure OpenAI was not verified on the catalog page.
Audio Input	Unknown. Speech endpoints were not on the homepage snippet.	Yes, requires plus plan. Audio models cover speech-to-text and GPT-4o audio input.
Canvas / Artifact Editor	No. Playground, not a canvas.	No. Not a ChatGPT Canvas product. Playgrounds are for testing API calls.
Screen Sharing / Computer Use	No. No computer-use product.	Partial. computer-use-preview is listed for the Responses API computer-use tool. That is not a consumer screen-share chat.

Memory & Context — Tie

Memory & Context: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
Persistent Memory	No. Stateless inference. You keep history.	Partial. Responses API and Assistants threads persist message history when you enable those features; models are otherwise stateless.
Large Context Window	Unknown. Depends on the open model you host. No single Together window on the homepage.	Yes, requires plus plan. Depends on the deployed model; gpt-chat-latest lists a 400k context window.
Custom Instructions	Yes, requires free plan. System prompts in the API.	Partial. System prompts are API parameters, not a ChatGPT-style global custom-instructions UI.
Conversation History	Partial. Playground/console history. The API is stateless.	Partial. Optional Responses API / Assistants threads store history in your resource; chat completions are otherwise stateless.

Integrations — Tie

Integrations: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
Web Search / Browsing	No. Not a search product.	Unknown. Grounding/search on Azure OpenAI was not checked. Distinct from Copilot.
Plugins / Extensions	Partial. Endpoints, batch, dedicated clusters. Not a GPT plugin store.	Partial. Functions and tools are documented; there is no ChatGPT plugin store.
API Access	Yes, requires free plan. Inference API, fine-tuning, GPU cloud. Usage billing, not a seat.	Yes, requires plus plan. REST API for deployed models in your Azure resource. Usage billing.
Zapier Integration	Unknown. No first-party Zapier listing was checked.	Unknown. No first-party Zapier listing was checked.
Custom GPTs / Bots	No. No GPT store.	Partial. Assistants / Agents APIs let you build assistants; there is no public Custom GPT store.
Real-time Collaboration	No. No multiplayer chat.	Unknown. Team sharing in Azure AI was not checked.
Live Social Data Integration	No. No live social firehose.	No. No live social firehose.
Live Citation Mapping	No. Not a cited-search product.	Unknown. Grounding citations on Azure were not checked.

Developer — Azure OpenAI Service Wins

Developer: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
Function Calling	Unknown. Tool use on hosted models was not confirmed on the homepage.	Yes, requires plus plan. Functions, tools, and parallel tool calling are listed on Azure OpenAI chat models.
Streaming Responses	Yes, requires plus plan. Serverless inference streams tokens. Research kernels (FlashAttention) are the latency pitch.	Yes, requires plus plan. Chat Completions and Responses APIs stream tokens; the service is documented as processing prompts via those APIs.
Fine-Tuning	Yes, requires plus plan. Fine-tuning is a listed product next to inference and GPU cloud.	Yes, requires plus plan. Customers can upload training data to create a fine-tuned model exclusive to their resource.
Embeddings API	Unknown. An embeddings endpoint was not confirmed on the homepage.	Yes, requires plus plan. Embedding models convert text to vectors in the Azure OpenAI catalog.
Structured Output (JSON)	Unknown. JSON mode was not confirmed on the homepage.	Yes, requires plus plan. Structured outputs are listed on gpt-chat-latest and other Azure OpenAI chat models.
Reasoning / Thinking Mode	Unknown. You can host reasoning open models. No Together Deep Think toggle.	Yes, requires plus plan. o-series and later chat models list reasoning; some models expose a configurable reasoning effort.
Local Execution	No. Cloud GPUs / serverless. Not on your laptop.	No. Cloud-hosted in your Azure region.
Open Weights	Partial. Inference cloud for open models. Together’s serving stack is not a weight release.	No. Hosts OpenAI proprietary models, not open-weight releases.
Multi-Agent Orchestration	No. You orchestrate in your app.	Partial. GPT-5.6 series lists multi-agent orchestration as preview on Azure.

Platforms — Tie

Platforms: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
Web App	Yes, requires free plan. together.ai console.	Yes, requires plus plan. Azure AI Foundry / portal for deploying and testing models.
iOS App	No. No iOS app.	No. No consumer iOS app. Distinct from Copilot mobile.
Android App	No. No Android app.	No. No consumer Android app.
Desktop App	No. No desktop app.	No. Portal and API. No branded consumer chat desktop app.
Chrome Extension	No. No Chrome extension.	No. Not a browser extension. Do not conflate with Copilot.

Privacy — Azure OpenAI Service Wins

Privacy: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
GDPR Compliant	Unknown. Needs a current DPA read.	Yes, requires plus plan. Azure OpenAI is an Azure service under the Microsoft Products and Services DPA; Trust Center documents GDPR for Azure.
Opt Out of Data Training	Unknown. Training use of prompts was not checked.	Yes, requires plus plan. Prompts, completions, embeddings, and training data are not used to train foundation models without customer permission.
Enterprise Privacy Mode	Unknown. Dedicated endpoints exist; enterprise contract terms were not on the homepage.	Yes, requires enterprise plan. Private VNet, customer-managed keys, and Microsoft enterprise agreements.

Workspaces — Azure OpenAI Service Wins

Workspaces: Together AI compared with Azure OpenAI Service
Feature	Together AI	Azure OpenAI Service
Projects / Folders	No. No consumer project product.	Yes, requires plus plan. Microsoft Foundry organizes work into projects and resources in the Azure tenant.