IBM watsonx Assistant vs Tars
IBM watsonx Assistant
cloud.ibm.comTars
hellotars.comSide by side
| Figure | IBM watsonx Assistant | Tars |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $140/mo | $50/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · Chatbot Builders | 9.3 (#2) | 8.7 (#41) |
| API | The watsonx Assistant v2 API requires a paid Plus plan or higher. | The Agent Builder platform includes an API Integration component for connecting agents to a technology stack and fetching or submitting data in real time. |
| Founded | 1911 | LinkedIn and Gartner list the company as founded in 2016. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Headquarters | Armonk, New York, United States | Newark, Delaware, United States |
| Integrations | Available integrations include web chat, phone, Facebook Messenger, Genesys Bot Connector, Microsoft Teams, Slack, SMS, WhatsApp with Twilio, and Search. | Tars advertises more than 700 prebuilt integrations covering CRM, payments, marketing, databases, communications and scheduling. |
| Security | The service supports TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3, with TLS 1.3 as the default. | Tars states that it is compliant with GDPR, ISO, SOC 2, and HIPAA. |
| Support | Lite and Trial accounts receive Basic support with self-service resources but no technical product support. | The Freemium plan includes community support, Premium includes live chat support, and Enterprise includes a dedicated account manager. |
Plans
IBM watsonx Assistant
- LiteFree
- TrialFree
- Plus$140 a month
- Enterprise with data isolationPriced on request
Tars
- FreemiumFree
- Premium$499 a month
- FreemiumFree
- Live Chat add-on$600 a year
- Professional support services add-on$5,000 a year
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
IBM watsonx Assistant
IBM watsonx Assistant builds branded chatbots for live conversations across devices, applications, and channels. It uses natural-language understanding and machine-learning models customized from customer data to answer in real time. Actions organize customer tasks into steps within a conversation, while a Watson Discovery integration can search corporate data collections for answers. Integrations include web chat, phone, Facebook Messenger, Genesys Bot Connector, Microsoft Teams, Slack, SMS, WhatsApp with Twilio, and Search. Web chat can pass conversations to live-agent integrations including Genesys Web Messenger, NICE CXone, Salesforce, and Zendesk. The assistant is available as a managed IBM Cloud service or on premises with IBM Cloud Pak for Data. Lite is free, and the free Trial lasts 30 days. Plus costs $140 a month for the first 1,000 monthly users; additional users cost $14 per 100 active users per month, and phone voice adds $9 per 100 users per month. The v2 API requires Plus or higher. IBM is upgrading eligible instances to watsonx Orchestrate; existing resources remain operational.
Tars
Tars provides AI agents for customer support and customer acquisition, with a no-code builder for creating agents without writing code. Agents can retrieve answers from Knowledge Bases trained on sources such as websites and PDFs, use tools, branch according to user intent, and combine retrieval with multi-step workflows. Tars describes deployment across web, WhatsApp and email, with conversations carried across channels. Built-in integrations connect agents to customer experience technology stacks, and an API Integration component can fetch or submit data in real time. Tars states compliance with GDPR, ISO, SOC 2 and HIPAA. The Freemium plan includes 50 conversations per month, five Knowledge Bases, basic LLM models, community support and one month of data retention. When the monthly conversation allowance is used, the agent stops until the customer upgrades. A conversation counts all messages between an agent and user within 24 hours. Premium costs $499 a month and includes advanced LLM models, 20 Knowledge Bases and 12 months of data retention. Premium offers live chat support; Enterprise includes a dedicated account manager.