IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index Data platform ML platforms › Small business September 2026 Edition

ML platforms for small business buyers

Asked as “machine learning platform”, and as “MLOps platform for training and deploying models”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 52 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Contested
17% of first choices, contested.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Google Vertex AI17%19%48accepted challenger
02Google Colab13%0%12accepted challenger
03Azure Machine Learning10%29%42criticized challenger
04MLflow10%10%21accepted challenger
05Databricks4%55%20criticized challenger
06H2O.ai2%5%19accepted challenger
07BigML2%0%11accepted challenger
08Dataiku2%18%11accepted challenger
09Amazon SageMaker2%43%47criticized challenger
Show the five products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
14Kubeflow0%64%14criticized challenger
13DataRobot0%39%23criticized challenger
10KNIME0%0%22accepted challenger
11Hugging Face0%0%11accepted challenger
12RapidMiner0%0%10accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative30%
Key
01Google Vertex AI17%
02Google Colab13%
03Azure Machine Learning10%
04MLflow10%
05Databricks4%
06H2O.ai2%
07BigML2%
08Dataiku2%
09Amazon SageMaker2%
10KNIME0%
11Hugging Face0%
12RapidMiner0%
13DataRobot0%
14Kubeflow0%

02What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Amazon SageMaker
43%
20 of 47 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“**Avoid or be very cautious** with enterprise‑focused, full‑featured cloud ML services (SageMaker, Azure ML, Google Cloud AI Platform, IBM Watson)” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
Azure Machine Learning
29%
12 of 42 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“**Avoid or be very cautious** with enterprise‑focused, full‑featured cloud ML services (SageMaker, Azure ML, Google Cloud AI Platform, IBM Watson)” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
Databricks
55%
11 of 20 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Premium pricing and steep learning curve; overkill for simple analytics or small data sets.” GLM 4.7 FlashX, negative prompt
Kubeflow
64%
9 of 14 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 8 hard negative
“Kubeflow - not suitable for simple ML projects that require minimal steps and do not need orchestration features. Also, requires Kubernetes expertise.” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

63 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 5 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 799 links across 272 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

41 answers · 97 citations · 10 models
18 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
17 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
15 answers · 19 citations · 7 models
15 answers · 15 citations · 8 models
14 answers · 14 citations · 8 models
14 answers · 14 citations · 10 models
13 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
13 answers · 13 citations · 9 models
12 answers · 12 citations · 8 models
11 answers · 12 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Dataiku11 answers · 11 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best machine learning platform for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which MLOps platform for training and deploying models would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top machine learning platforms for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best machine learning platform for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a machine learning platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which machine learning platforms should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceClearMLChanged
One alternativeDVC
Google Vertex AI
Five alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Anyscale, Azure Machine Learning, Dataiku, Hugging Face Inference Endpoints
against: Databricks
Google Colab, Scikit-learn + Python
Four alternativesAmazon Web Services, Hugging Face, Microsoft Azure Free Trial, TensorFlow/PyTorch
against: Google Cloud AutoML
no first choiceagainst: Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI, SAS
GPT-5.4 miniDatabricks
Three alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Fabric
DatabricksHeld
One alternativeAmazon SageMaker
Databricks
Three alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI
Google Vertex AI
Two alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashAkkio, Obviously AI
Four alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI, KNIME Analytics Platform
TrueFoundryChanged
Two alternativesModal, Qwak
ClearML, Lightning AI, Modal, Replicate
Two alternativesBaseten, Weights & Biases
KNIME Analytics Platform
Eleven alternativesAnthropic, DVC, Google Colab, Google Gemini Flash, Google Vertex AI, Hugging Face, MLflow, OpenAI, Paperspace, RunPod, n8n
against: AWS, Amazon SageMaker, Azure, Databricks
Baseten, Modal
Eight alternativesAmazon Bedrock, Anyscale, DataRobot, LangSmith, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, Replicate, Vertex AI AutoML, Weights & Biases
against: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI, Kubeflow
against: Amazon SageMaker, Apache Spark, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI, Kubeflow, MLflow
Perplexity SonarGoogle Vertex AI
Three alternativesBigML, Deepnote, KNIME
MLflowChanged
Four alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, BentoML, Google Vertex AI / AI Platform
against: Kubeflow
Amazon SageMaker, Google Vertex AI
Eight alternativesAzure Machine Learning, DataRobot, Databricks Mosaic AI, Dataiku, Deepnote, Feast, H2O.ai, MLflow
MLflow
Three alternativesDeepnote, Google Cloud AI / Vertex AI, KNIME
no first choiceagainst: Azure Machine Learning, Google AI / Vertex AI, IBM Watson, Oracle AI, SAP AI
Grok 4.1 FastGoogle Vertex AI
Three alternativesAzure Machine Learning, H2O.ai, RapidMiner
against: Amazon SageMaker, DataRobot, Databricks
MLflowChanged
Two alternativesBentoML, ClearML
against: Amazon SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, Weights & Biases
Google Colab
Three alternativesHugging Face, MLflow, Weights & Biases
against: Amazon SageMaker Studio
Google Colab, Kaggle
Four alternativesHugging Face Spaces, KNIME, PyCaret, TensorFlow/PyTorch + local setup
against: Amazon SageMaker
no first choiceagainst: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Databricks, Google Vertex AI
Mistral SmallAzure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI
One alternativeIBM Watson
Amazon SageMakerChanged
Three alternativesDataRobot, Google Vertex AI, MLflow
Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI
Three alternativesAmazon SageMaker, BigML, DataRobot
Azure Machine Learning, Google Colab
Two alternativesGoogle Vertex AI, H2O.ai
no first choiceagainst: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, DagsHub, Kubeflow
DeepSeek V4 FlashAkkio, BigML
Four alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI, H2O.ai
against: DataRobot
MLflowChanged
Four alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Dataiku, Google Vertex AI
no first choice
Six alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Dataiku, Google Vertex AI, H2O.ai, KNIME
against: DataRobot, Databricks
Google Colab
Three alternativesAzure Machine Learning, Google Cloud AutoML & Vertex AI, Kaggle
ClearML, MLflow
Five alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, BentoML, Google Vertex AI, Weights & Biases
against: DataRobot, Domino Data Lab
against: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Databricks, DeepSeek, Google Vertex AI, IBM Watson / watsonx, Kubeflow, Oracle AI, SAP AI
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldno first choiceAzure Machine Learning, Google Colab
One alternativeGoogle Cloud
no first choiceagainst: Amazon SageMaker, DagsHub, Google Vertex AI, Kubeflow, MLflow + open-source serving, Modal, Replicate, Together AI
Qwen 3.7 FlashGraphite Note, Pecan AI
Three alternativesAzure Machine Learning, BigML, Google Vertex AI
against: Amazon SageMaker
ModalChanged
One alternativeBanana.dev
against: Amazon SageMaker, Databricks, Kubeflow, Kubernetes
Google Vertex AI
Four alternativesAzure Machine Learning, DataRobot, Modal, Replicate
against: Amazon SageMaker
KNIME Analytics Platform
Four alternativesAutoGluon, Google Colab, PyCaret, RapidMiner
against: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning
no first choiceagainst: IBM Watson, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, Oracle AI, SAP AI
Kimi K2Google Vertex AI, H2O.aiagainst: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine LearningGoogle Vertex AIChanged
Two alternativesAmazon SageMaker, MLflow
against: DataRobot, Domino Data Lab, H2O Driverless AI
Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI
Three alternativesDataRobot, H2O.ai, Weights & Biases
against: Databricks, Dataiku
KNIME Analytics Platform, TensorFlow
Three alternativesGoogle Cloud, H2O-3, Kaggle
against: Alteryx, Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning
no first choiceagainst: DataRobot, Domino Data Labagainst: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI
GLM 4.7 FlashXAzure Machine Learning
Five alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, H2O.ai, KNIME Analytics Platform, Saturn Cloud
against: DataRobot
Google Vertex AIChanged
Five alternativesAzure Machine Learning, DataRobot, Kubeflow, MLflow, ZenML
against: Amazon SageMaker
Amazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning
Two alternativesGoogle Vertex AI, KNIME
against: Databricks, Dataiku
Amazon SageMaker Canvas, Google Colab, KNIME Analytics Platform
Five alternativesBigML, Google Vertex AI, MLflow, PyCaret, TensorTurn
against: Obviously AI
no first choiceagainst: Amazon SageMaker, DataRobot, Databricks, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Google Vertex AI, H2O Driverless AI, IBM Watson Machine Learning, JMP, Oracle Machine Learning, SAP AI, Salesforce Einstein
MiniMax M2.5Azure Machine Learning, Google Vertex AI
One alternativeAmazon SageMaker
Dataiku, Google Vertex AIChanged
Two alternativesAmazon SageMaker, MLflow
Databricks, Google Vertex AI, Hugging Face
Three alternativesAmazon SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, KNIME
Google Colab, Kaggle
Two alternativesAzure Machine Learning, KNIME
no first choiceagainst: Amazon SageMaker, Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, DataRobot, Databricks, Domino Data Lab, Google Cloud AI Platform / Vertex AI, H2O.ai, IBM Watson Machine Learning, Kubeflow, MLflow
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:08no04 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:13yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:57yes1321 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:44yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:47yes3216 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:11yes98 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:24yes1817 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:51yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:22yes1552 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:48yes818 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:49yes29135 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:03yes530 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:36yes97 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:14yes24 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:48yes1128 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:56yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:14yes3017 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:47no04 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:16yes1618 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:56yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:39no032 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:18yes2026 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:00yes1858 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:03yes661 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:33yes1713 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:02yes79 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:57yes2830 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:11yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:11yes3716 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:54yes59 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:52yes1818 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:03yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:02yes543 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:51yes1553 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:09yes2340 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:42yes1132 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:04no04 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:47yes422 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:31yes623 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:41yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:22yes179 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:52yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:56yes815 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:45yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:35yes948 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:08yes1025 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:05yes15107 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:11yes834 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:26no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:26no09 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:49no016 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:50yes209 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:54yes1310 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:28no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:11yes1823 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:34yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:36no036 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:32yes1564 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:52yes13102 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:00yes528 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:28yes1710 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:02yes26 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:44yes2322 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:50yes208 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:46yes3716 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:36yes54 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:35yes2019 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:38yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:41yes1051 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:09yes2535 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:50yes2581 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:35yes1088 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
Domino read as Domino Data Lab
Unresolved, counted raw
Altair
Amazon SageMaker Autopilot
Amazon SageMaker Studio
Apache Spark MLlib
AutoGluon
Azure Cognitive Services
Banana.dev
Feast
Google AI / Vertex AI
Google AutoML Tables
Google Cloud AI / Vertex AI
Google Cloud AutoML
Google Colab / Vertex AI Workbench
Google Gemini Flash
Google Vertex AI / AI Platform
Google Vertex AI AutoML
Graphite Note
H2O-3
Hugging Face Spaces
IBM Watson / watsonx
JMP (by SAS)
KServe
Lightning AI
MLflow + open-source serving
Microsoft Azure Free Trial
Microsoft Copilot Studio
OpenAI/Anthropic APIs
Oracle Machine Learning (OML)
Power BI
Qwak
Roboflow
SageMaker Studio Lab (free)
Scikit-learn + Python
Seldon
Sigma
Streamlit / Gradio
TensorFlow/PyTorch + local setup
TensorTurn
V7
Vast.ai
Vertex AI AutoML
cnvrg.io
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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