Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models vs Beam 1.0

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models scores 80 (A) on agent readiness against Beam 1.0's 53.4 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do llm inference.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 830 models comparisons

Which one, for what

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models A

Best for Teams on Azure that need OpenAI models with Entra ID, private networking, EU or US data zones or FedRAMP scope, and one resource that also serves DeepSeek, Llama, Mistral and Grok models.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 52
  • Agent ergonomics, 98 against 67
  • Security & auth, 95 against 45
  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 50
  • Transparency & trust, 83 against 57

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

Intermittent failures and 5xx errors in Sweden Central for about six hours on 29 September 2026

Beam 1.0 D

Best for An OpenAI-compatible endpoint for a large open-weight coding and agent model, for builders who want the same model hosted or self-hosted under Apache-2.0.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No SLA, and per-organisation rate limits and the daily token allowance are not published as numbers

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Security & auth Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +50

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models 95

Model reading. Microsoft Entra ID tokens with Azure roles (the Cognitive Services OpenAI User role for calls), managed identities, and key authentication that can be disabled per resource, or two regenerable resource keys in the api-key header. No documented route puts the key in a URL query string (30). Prompts, completions, embeddings and training data aren't used to train foundation models without the customer's permission or instruction, per the data privacy page updated 4 August 2026 (20). Flagged prompts and completions may be stored in the customer's geography for human abuse review, with no retention period stated, and approved customers can turn that storage off through modified abuse monitoring. Responses API data is kept 30 days by default unless store is false (12 of 15). Azure Monitor resource logs and the subscription activity log, as read in the Foundry fine-tuning dossier (15). MSRC coordinated disclosure policy and Microsoft's bounty programme, both named in microsoft.com's security.txt, and Azure OpenAI is listed in FedRAMP High and DoD IL2 scope in Azure public regions. The security.txt passed its Expires date on 2026-09-23 and was still expired on 6 November, which the Bedrock and S3 dossiers mark down by 2, applied here too (18 of 20, down from 20 on 6 October for consistency).

Beam 1.0 45

Model reading. API keys per project, revocable, shown once and disabled when their creator leaves, with no scopes, expiry or rotation API found (20 of 30). Training 10 of 20, partial kept. The API reference says each response's reflection-data-retention header reports contributor when content may be used to train Reflection's models "under contributor terms your organization accepted". The API safety page and commercial terms read on 17 October are struck (reflection.ai now disallows our crawler), so whether training is off by default can't be read. Retention 5 of 15, partial kept. The header can report zero, standard or contributor, and no readable page states periods or whether zero retention is offered. x-request-id on every response and the retention header, with usage dashboards behind the login and not read (5 of 15). Security programme 5 of 20 (was 6). The model card names reports@reflection.ai for security vulnerabilities; developers.reflection.ai has no security.txt (404 on 17 October), and the safety report and reflection.ai's security.txt can't be read. No bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 found on a readable page. 20 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 45.

Maintenance & community Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +36

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models 86

Model reading. GPT-6.1 Terra released on Azure on 26 October 2026 and a gpt-chat-latest preview of 7 October was added, after GPT-6.1 Sol on 29 September (30). GA models get a retirement date 18 months after launch, set at release and readable through the Models API, with at least 60 days' email and Service Health notice, and previews at least 30 days, so a GA retirement is known more than six months ahead (12 of 12). Many shutdown dates in the 90 days to 6 November, most of them previews or partner models, among them DeepSeek-R1 (13 August), MAI-Image-2 and 2e (15 August), model-router previews (30 August), MAI-Transcribe-1 (15 September), MAI-Image-2.5 previews (1 October), the 2025-03-20 audio models and sora-2 (15 October), a Cohere Command A Plus preview (16 October) and gpt-image-1 (23 October), each in the schedule with a replacement where one exists (4 of 8). The Foundry what's new page, still on August when read on 6 November, plus Microsoft Q&A and paid support; no Azure OpenAI what's new was found (10 of 15). The SDKs are OpenAI's repositories, replies not sampled (5 of 10). Current official SDKs, openai 3.46.0 on PyPI (5 November) and 7.53.0 on npm, plus Microsoft's @azure/openai 2.0.0 companion (15). Supported runtimes stated, Python 3.9 or later and Node.js 20 or later, though openai 3.46.0 requires Python 3.10 (10).

Beam 1.0 50

Model reading. The weights were published on 16 October 2026, the date on the Hugging Face model page (the repository was created on 7 October); later commits to 30 October add evaluation results and a guide, which record no model change (30). One model, with a shutdown_date field and a lifecycle section in the docs but no notice period for retirements, and no history of releases or retirements yet (4 of 20). No changelog. Support through the platform and developers@reflection.ai for higher limits, and the model card names reports@reflection.ai. The Hub page shows 15 discussions (10 open, 5 closed), replies not sampled (6 of 25). No first-party SDK, the docs rely on the OpenAI SDKs (5 of 15). Reflection's serving guides for vLLM, SGLang, TokenSpeed, Transformers and Dynamo, a Beam Verifier repository, and fine-tuning recipes now published for NeMo AutoModel, Megatron Bridge, Axolotl and TRL (5 of 10, partial kept). 30 + 4 + 6 + 5 + 5 = 50.

Agent ergonomics Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +31

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models 98

Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Tool use with parallel calls and a forced call by naming the function in tool_choice, 18 of 20 because gpt-6.1-sol calls tools only through the Responses API (18). Strict structured outputs (15). Prompt caching from 1,024 tokens, cached input at 0.1x on GPT-6 ($1 per million on Astra) and cache writes at 1.25x from GPT-5.6 on, with explicit breakpoints (15). 1,050,000-token context on GPT-6 and GPT-6.1, input capped at 922,000 (15). Batch at 50% off Global Standard with a 24-hour target (10). The docs use OpenAI's own SDKs for Python, JavaScript, C#, Go and Java against the v1 endpoint (10). 429 and quota errors documented with retry headers (15). Calls name a deployment rather than a model, so each model must be deployed in the resource first, which the model checklist doesn't score.

Beam 1.0 67

Model reading (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs and defaults, errors). tool_choice of auto, none, required or a named function, parallel_tool_calls, strict tools and up to 128 tools. The tool-calling loop needs reasoning_content sent back on every assistant turn, and the docs say the model sometimes returns a tool-call step without it, after which every request in the session fails (12 of 20). json_object and strict json_schema (15). Cached prompt tokens are reported in usage, but caching can't be steered, the prompt_cache_* options are ignored and no cached price exists in the beta (5 of 10). 1,048,576-token context and 131,072 output tokens (15). No batch endpoint (0 of 10). No Reflection SDK, the OpenAI Python and TypeScript SDKs are documented, and defaults cost an agent turns, with reasoning always on at max, stop and seed ignored and a default output budget not reduced to fit the prompt (5 of 10). Machine-readable error.code values with param, x-should-retry, Retry-After and x-request-id (15). 12 + 15 + 5 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 = 67, per the 17 October reading of the developers guides, not re-read on 4 November beyond the models and rate-limits pages.

Reliability Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +28

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models 80

Azure status page with post-incident reviews, listing Azure OpenAI Service, Foundry Models and Foundry Agent Service as components (20). One incident in the 90 days to 6 November 2026 names Azure OpenAI, and no review after it does, intermittent request failures, higher latency and HTTP 5xx errors in Sweden Central from 10:03 to 15:58 UTC on 29 September 2026 (tracking 7QL5-Z50), counted as one major outage as in the Foundry fine-tuning dossier. The 23 July West US review and the 30 September gateway incident don't name it (10). Quota tiers from Free to Tier 6 with TPM and RPM per model and deployment type, 1,000 RPM and 1,000,000 TPM for each GPT-6 model on Global Standard at Tier 1 (15). 429 responses carry retry-after-ms, every response carries x-ratelimit-* headers, and the quota guide gives exponential backoff with jitter and SDK retry settings (15). The models page says models sold by Azure are covered by Azure service-level agreements and links the Online Services SLA. The consolidated SLA document wouldn't download on 6 October and wasn't retried on 6 November, so the clause rests on Microsoft's docs, read the same way as the 5 October Azure Speech check (10). The v1 API is GA and the GPT-6 models carry no preview label (10).

Beam 1.0 52

Hosted lines, for the Reflection API. Status page at status.reflection.ai on incident.io, with API, platform and developer docs components and Atom and RSS feeds (20). In the 90 days to 4 November 2026 its incident pages list two full outages of the API component, a serving cluster down from 22:01 to 23:20 UTC on 14 October and elevated errors from 06:10 to 07:10 UTC on 15 October, each an hour or more, so two majors. Three more are labelled partial outages (16 October 02:28 to 02:38 UTC, 22 October rate-limit errors in two windows, 3 November about 20:10 to 21:38 UTC on one inference provider), read as minor. Two majors give 5. Rate limits are described per organisation in requests and tokens per minute and per day, with concurrency caps and headers, but no figures are published (5 of 15). 429 and 503 responses carry Retry-After, daily limits add x-should-retry: false, and the errors page says which codes to retry, with exponential backoff and jitter. There are no idempotency keys, and a chat completion is the billed call, so this run's value for retry guidance without idempotency keys gives 12 (was 15). No SLA found (0). The developers docs read on 4 November carry no beta or preview label for the API; the earlier beta reading came from reflection.ai pages now struck (10). 20 + 5 + 5 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 52.

Transparency & trust Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +26

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models 83

Closed service under the Microsoft Product Terms, with the v1 spec under MIT and the OpenAI SDKs under Apache-2.0 (15). The data privacy page agrees with the product terms on no training and states where data is processed and stored by deployment type, but gives no retention period for the human-review store and sits beside a 30-day default for Responses data (24 of 30). A published lifecycle policy and a retirement schedule with dates and replacements, but on 6 November the schedule listed gpt-realtime-mini 2025-10-06 and 2025-12-15 twice each with different retirement dates, and no GPT-6 model yet (18 of 20, down from 20). Data locations stated for Standard, Data Zone and Global deployments, and a public sub-processor list per the 5 October Azure Speech check, not re-read (20).

Beam 1.0 57

Weights under Apache-2.0, an OSI licence, per the model card, which says the licence doesn't restrict distillation or training on outputs. The hosted API is a closed service whose commercial terms are on reflection.ai and can no longer be read (25 of 30, kept). Data handling 10 of 30, partial kept. What remains readable is the API reference's retention header (zero, standard, contributor) and the rate-limits page's request for data retention requirements; the terms, privacy policy, API safety page and zero-retention page are struck. Deprecation 4 of 20 (was 6). A shutdown_date field and a lifecycle section that says to move off a model before that date, with no notice period or dated notice; the fee-increase notice came from the struck terms. Subprocessors 0 of 20 (was 18). The list read on 17 October is on reflection.ai and struck, and no readable page names subprocessors or data locations. 25 + 10 + 4 + 0 = 39.

Payments & pricing Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +10

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models 20

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1M-token prices are public in the Azure Retail Prices API without a login, while the pricing page fills its table with JavaScript and showed GPT-6 prices as pending on 6 October (20). The quota tiers include a Free tier, but an Azure subscription needs a payment method (0). A person signs up for Azure in a browser and creates a resource and a deployment before the first call (0).

Beam 1.0 10

Graded on the Reflection API. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). No per-token, plan or allocation price is published on any readable page; the beta pricing page on reflection.ai is struck (0, was 10). Free tier 10 of 20, partial kept. The rate-limits page describes a daily token allowance and asks those requesting higher limits whether they are "interested in paid usage", and the authentication page says some organisations must verify a credit card before keys work. A person signs up in the browser at platform.reflection.ai to get a key (0). 0 + 0 + 10 + 0 = 10.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAzure OpenAI in Foundry ModelsBeam 1.0Edge
Reliability16%208052Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +28
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28784Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.29867Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +31
Security & auth14%17.59545Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +50
Payments & pricing10%12.52010Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88650Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +36
Transparency & trust7%8.88357Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models +26
Negative events≤1500
TotalA 80/100D 53.4/100

Facts side by side

FactAzure OpenAI in Foundry ModelsBeam 1.0
KindModel APIModel API
VendorMicrosoftReflection
Hosted endpointhttps://<resource>.openai.azure.com/openai/v1https://api.reflection.ai/openai/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the Microsoft Product Terms. The v1 OpenAPI spec is MIT, and the OpenAI SDKs the docs use are Apache-2.0Weights under Apache-2.0. The hosted Reflection API is a closed service under Reflection's commercial terms of service
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-262026-10-16
Terms last updatedno date given2026-10-05
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-012026-08-28
Customer content may train modelsyesyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity454k npm/wknone
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models

An OpenAI-compatible v1 API with a public OpenAPI spec, Entra ID roles in place of shared keys and FedRAMP High scope, with GPT-6 and GPT-6.1 at OpenAI's list prices on Global Standard. Access needs an Azure subscription with a card and a deployment per model, and a 29 September 2026 incident caused about six hours of failures in Sweden Central.

Beam 1.0

The Reflection API is OpenAI-compatible, with an OpenAPI document, strict structured outputs and tool calls, and error codes that say when to retry, and the weights are Apache-2.0. No price or rate-limit figure is published on a readable page, reasoning can't be turned off, and the API had two full outages on 14 and 15 October 2026.

Before you call either

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models

  1. Point the OpenAI SDK at https://<resource>.openai.azure.com/openai/v1/ and pass the deployment name as model, not the model id
  2. Prefer Entra ID with the Cognitive Services OpenAI User role over the resource key, which opens the whole data plane
  3. On 429 wait for retry-after-ms, then back off with jitter. The OpenAI SDK retries twice by default
  4. Set store: false on Responses calls you don't need kept. Stored responses persist 30 days by default
  5. Keep remote MCP approvals on for servers you don't control. They're required by default

Beam 1.0

  1. Send reasoning_effort low or medium for short tasks. The default is max, and none or minimal return 400 unsupported_value
  2. Return every assistant message with its reasoning_content unchanged. If a turn comes back without it, start a new conversation, since later requests fail with missing_required_parameter
  3. Don't rely on stop or seed. Both are accepted and ignored, so truncate output in your own code
  4. Honour x-should-retry: false on a 429. It means a daily limit is spent and Retry-After counts to 00:00 UTC
  5. Set max_completion_tokens yourself on long prompts. The default budget isn't reduced to fit the prompt and includes reasoning tokens

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models or Beam 1.0?

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models scores 80 (A) on agent readiness against Beam 1.0's 53.4 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Do Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models and Beam 1.0 need an API key?

Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Beam 1.0 needs an API key.

Can an agent call Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models and Beam 1.0 without installing anything?

Yes. Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models has a hosted endpoint at https://<resource>.openai.azure.com/openai/v1 and Beam 1.0 at https://api.reflection.ai/openai/v1.

Other comparisons with Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models or Beam 1.0

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.