IBM Watson

IBM Watson is IBM's AI and machine learning platform offering a suite of cloud-based services including natural language processing, speech recognition, visual recognition, and other AI-powered capabilities for building intelligent applications.

IBM Watson is listed with 4 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Artificial Intelligence, IBM, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Speech Recognition.

IBM Watson’s developer surface includes developer portal, documentation, getting-started guide, support, pricing, and 9 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

18.5/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only Heartbeat 0/100 dormant saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-13 · rubric v0.28.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

4 APIs

Artificial Intelligence IBM Machine Learning Natural Language Processing Speech Recognition

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-13 · rubric v0.28.0

Composite quality — 18.5/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 6.1 / 17

Access Clarity 2.5 / 17

Operational Transparency 2.4 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 5.3 / 9

Regulatory Posture 1.6 / 15

Agent readiness — 1/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Show this score on your site.

It updates itself when the score changes. Paste this where you link to your API docs:

<a href="https://apis.io/providers/ibm-watson/"><img src="https://apis.io/badge/ibm-watson/card.svg" alt="IBM Watson on APIs.io — Kin Score by API Evangelist"></a>

Other styles, a README pill and a shields.io endpoint are on the badge page.

Raise your score.

Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document Ask about this →
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship Ask about this →
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author Ask about this →
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey) Ask about this →
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented) Ask about this →
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes Ask about this →

12 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 0.0 — up to +25.0 composite points Ask about this →
Access Clarity scores 14.9 — up to +17.0 composite points Ask about this →
Developer Ergonomics scores 35.7 — up to +12.9 composite points Ask about this →

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Not sure how this applies to your stack? Ask about any one item. Kin Lane reads every question, looks at your profile and your situation, and replies with what a fix would take — scoped to that one area, priced up front, yours whether you ship it or not. Ask a question →

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/ibm-watson/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/ibm-watson to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

IBM Watson Speech to Text

Convert speech into text using AI-powered speech recognition and transcription. The service uses machine learning to combine knowledge of grammar, language structure, and audio ...

IBM Watson Text to Speech

Convert written text to natural-sounding audio in a variety of languages and voices. The service synthesizes natural language text to audio using deep learning AI for lifelike s...

IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding

Analyze text to extract metadata from content such as concepts, entities, keywords, categories, sentiment, emotion, relations, and semantic roles.

IBM Watson Assistant

Build, train, and deploy conversational interactions into any application, device, or channel. Create AI-powered virtual agents that understand natural language and provide help...

IBM Watson API pricing

Not yet checked against IBM Watson's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against IBM Watson's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

IBM Watson Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

IBM Watson Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

IBM Watson Finops

FINOPS

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

IBM Watson Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

IBM Watson Vulnerability Disclosure

Hackerone · security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 2

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal

Portal

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Support

Support

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Pricing

Pricing

Company 2

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn

Website

Website

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

ParentCompany

ParentCompany

Source (apis.yml)

aid: ibm-watson
name: IBM Watson
description: IBM Watson is IBM's AI and machine learning platform offering a suite of cloud-based services including natural
  language processing, speech recognition, visual recognition, and other AI-powered capabilities for building intelligent
  applications.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-13'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/ibm-watson.png
tags:
- Artificial Intelligence
- IBM
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language Processing
- Speech Recognition
tags_raw:
- Artificial Intelligence
- IBM
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language Processing
- Speech Recognition
- Machine-Learning
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/ibm-watson/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2024-03-30'
modified: '2026-08-21'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: ibm-watson:ibm-watson-speech-to-text
  name: IBM Watson Speech to Text
  description: Convert speech into text using AI-powered speech recognition and transcription. The service uses machine learning
    to combine knowledge of grammar, language structure, and audio signal composition to accurately transcribe human voice.
  humanURL: https://www.ibm.com/products/speech-to-text
  tags:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Speech Recognition
  - Transcription
  tags_raw:
  - AI
  - Speech Recognition
  - Transcription
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/speech-to-text
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/speech-to-text?topic=speech-to-text-gettingStarted
- aid: ibm-watson:ibm-watson-text-to-speech
  name: IBM Watson Text to Speech
  description: Convert written text to natural-sounding audio in a variety of languages and voices. The service synthesizes
    natural language text to audio using deep learning AI for lifelike speech synthesis.
  humanURL: https://www.ibm.com/products/text-to-speech
  tags:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Speech Synthesis
  - Text-to-Speech
  tags_raw:
  - AI
  - Speech Synthesis
  - Text to Speech
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/text-to-speech
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/text-to-speech?topic=text-to-speech-gettingStarted
- aid: ibm-watson:ibm-watson-natural-language-understanding
  name: IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding
  description: Analyze text to extract metadata from content such as concepts, entities, keywords, categories, sentiment,
    emotion, relations, and semantic roles.
  humanURL: https://www.ibm.com/products/natural-language-understanding
  tags:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Natural Language Processing
  - Text Analysis
  tags_raw:
  - AI
  - Natural Language Processing
  - Text Analysis
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/natural-language-understanding
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/natural-language-understanding?topic=natural-language-understanding-getting-started
- aid: ibm-watson:ibm-watson-assistant
  name: IBM Watson Assistant
  description: Build, train, and deploy conversational interactions into any application, device, or channel. Create AI-powered
    virtual agents that understand natural language and provide helpful responses.
  humanURL: https://www.ibm.com/products/watson-assistant
  tags:
  - Chatbots
  - Conversational AI
  - Virtual Assistant
  tags_raw:
  - Chatbot
  - Conversational AI
  - Virtual Assistant
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/assistant-v2
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson-assistant?topic=watson-assistant-getting-started
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/ibm-watson-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/ibm-watson-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/ibm-watson-finops.yml
- type: ParentCompany
  url: https://apis.io/providers/ibm/
  name: Ibm
  x-relationship: product
  x-generated-by: ibm-family:2026-08-21
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/ibm-watson-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/ibm-watson-domain-security.yml
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/ibm-watson
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/ibm-watsonx
- type: Website
  url: https://www.ibm.com/watson
- type: Portal
  url: https://cloud.ibm.com/developer/watson/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/watson
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://cloud.ibm.com/developer/watson/documentation
- type: Support
  url: https://www.ibm.com/mysupport
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.ibm.com/watson/pricing
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
x-parent: ibm
x-relationship: product

IBM Watson API — frequently asked questions

Does IBM Watson have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 4 APIs from IBM Watson, including IBM Watson Speech to Text, IBM Watson Text to Speech and IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding, and 1 more.

How much does the IBM Watson API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for IBM Watson, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the IBM Watson API ready for AI agents?

IBM Watson has a Kin Score of 18.5 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.6 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-13.

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page

This provider

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/ibm-watson"

All providers

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"

Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/ibm-watson/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/ibm-watson/evidence"

Calls without X-API-Key need no key. Calls with it need a paid plan — get a key.

Get an API key

Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another provider. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.