If you've used AI coding models in a large corporate setting, you'll know that a lot of big corporate deployments basically require using AWS Bedrock for two simple reasons:
1. Large companies tend to already have an existing relationship with AWS, which makes things way easier to go through vs. setting up a new vendor relationship
2. Large companies tend to have strong internal requirements about making sure that internal data stays under company control. With AWS Bedrock, you can be a lot more confident that what you're feeding into the models is not going to end up in someone's training set somewhere. For where I work, this requirement is a dealbreaker for going directly through OpenAI's API instead of going through AWS Bedrock.
What other people are saying, but also because Amazon does not want to fuck around in this space. They don't want the legal fight or the reputational damage that would come with it.
To take an easy example that has actually had lawsuits I can link to, you must be unfamiliar with the lawsuits against Amazon for misusing sellers' data in order to undercut them with their own products... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/13-bln-uk-lawsuit-acc...
There's zero reason to "trust" Amazon about anything. (And yes, I know the retail and AWS sides of the company are different, but it's still the same company. The same rot is always there, just shuffled around.)
In contrast to Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, AWS has never done anything close to sneaking in unwanted training opt-outs after the fact.
They are the only ones I trust not to do that so far. And their terms are extremely clear on that, no fuzzy language. Exactly what we want to see. So we use Bedrock.
Actually yes, when it’s other huge corporations holding them accountable. It’s only when politicians who are much more cheaply bought get involved that creates problems. When the other side has a significant war chest to combat you with, suddenly behavior improves
Contractual obligation, external third party audits, and above all, AWS’s reputation.
AWS isn’t going to risk their reputation, and thus huge chunks of their business, just so a few AI labs can get some extra training data. That’s an insane risk with zero upside for AWS. AWS knows full well they will make insane quantities of cash without breaking legal contracts with companies who pay them billions each year for infra.
If you are wondering why anyone would spend more money to use these APIs through AWS instead of going direct: In some companies it’s nearly impossible to get new vendors approved. If the company has an AWS contract then you have to use what AWS offers.
Even if you can get it approved you are adding surface area to your annual security audits, adding another vendor that needs to be disclosed on security assessments, spreading your data to yet another processor, and adding another invoice and budget discussion. Depending on your customer contracts you may need to notify them of a new vendor. This might trigger a new security review. Oh it’s just another model on Bedrock? Bliss.
Claude Code keeps omitting new features from people using it through Amazon Bedrock (e.g. auto mode, ultra plan, Claude for Chrome). Hopefully some more competition can get them to rethink their strategy.
This is great news. I wish they were keeping their other models updated. With Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.7 already available on OpenRouter, bedrock is just not keeping up at all.
Absolutely huge news for OpenAI. Unimaginable amount of enterprises picked up Claude just because it was available in AWS, and now there's serious competition.
The AWS pricing page says 10% more than OpenAI, which is probably because they’re forcing all inference through the US and data residency is at a 10% premium from the model vendors for whatever reason (because you’ll pay for it).
If they put in a global endpoint like with Claude (or OpenAI directly) then it’ll probably match the direct pricing, if the pattern holds.
If you've used AI coding models in a large corporate setting, you'll know that a lot of big corporate deployments basically require using AWS Bedrock for two simple reasons:
1. Large companies tend to already have an existing relationship with AWS, which makes things way easier to go through vs. setting up a new vendor relationship 2. Large companies tend to have strong internal requirements about making sure that internal data stays under company control. With AWS Bedrock, you can be a lot more confident that what you're feeding into the models is not going to end up in someone's training set somewhere. For where I work, this requirement is a dealbreaker for going directly through OpenAI's API instead of going through AWS Bedrock.
How is one certain bedrock data isn’t being shuttled to external providers?
What other people are saying, but also because Amazon does not want to fuck around in this space. They don't want the legal fight or the reputational damage that would come with it.
They also don't really stand to benefit from doing so, unlike basically everyone else in this space.
They have access to a ridiculous amount of private customer data and so far have not shown any predilection to misusing that access.
To take an easy example that has actually had lawsuits I can link to, you must be unfamiliar with the lawsuits against Amazon for misusing sellers' data in order to undercut them with their own products... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/13-bln-uk-lawsuit-acc...
There's zero reason to "trust" Amazon about anything. (And yes, I know the retail and AWS sides of the company are different, but it's still the same company. The same rot is always there, just shuffled around.)
Bezos and Altman pinky-promised and are super trustworthy.
In contrast to Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, AWS has never done anything close to sneaking in unwanted training opt-outs after the fact.
They are the only ones I trust not to do that so far. And their terms are extremely clear on that, no fuzzy language. Exactly what we want to see. So we use Bedrock.
Contracts and the force of law?
Which notoriously are always holding the largest corporations accountable /s
Actually yes, when it’s other huge corporations holding them accountable. It’s only when politicians who are much more cheaply bought get involved that creates problems. When the other side has a significant war chest to combat you with, suddenly behavior improves
Any sufficiently large company will be prepared to fight this out in court where Amazon would eventually lose.
Contractual obligation, external third party audits, and above all, AWS’s reputation.
AWS isn’t going to risk their reputation, and thus huge chunks of their business, just so a few AI labs can get some extra training data. That’s an insane risk with zero upside for AWS. AWS knows full well they will make insane quantities of cash without breaking legal contracts with companies who pay them billions each year for infra.
If you are wondering why anyone would spend more money to use these APIs through AWS instead of going direct: In some companies it’s nearly impossible to get new vendors approved. If the company has an AWS contract then you have to use what AWS offers.
Even if you can get it approved you are adding surface area to your annual security audits, adding another vendor that needs to be disclosed on security assessments, spreading your data to yet another processor, and adding another invoice and budget discussion. Depending on your customer contracts you may need to notify them of a new vendor. This might trigger a new security review. Oh it’s just another model on Bedrock? Bliss.
Good news for competition.
Claude Code keeps omitting new features from people using it through Amazon Bedrock (e.g. auto mode, ultra plan, Claude for Chrome). Hopefully some more competition can get them to rethink their strategy.
This is great news. I wish they were keeping their other models updated. With Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.7 already available on OpenRouter, bedrock is just not keeping up at all.
Absolutely huge news for OpenAI. Unimaginable amount of enterprises picked up Claude just because it was available in AWS, and now there's serious competition.
As usual the more options the better for everyone. While this is not a direct replacement it is good that it exists.
More expensive than directly sourcing from OpenAI
The AWS pricing page says 10% more than OpenAI, which is probably because they’re forcing all inference through the US and data residency is at a 10% premium from the model vendors for whatever reason (because you’ll pay for it).
If they put in a global endpoint like with Claude (or OpenAI directly) then it’ll probably match the direct pricing, if the pattern holds.
(https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/, scroll to OpenAI)
It’s even more expensive for GovCloud customers. We pay a 30% premium on top of that.
It also could be to provide room for enterprise discount pricing without it being money-losing for one of the companies.
I have worked at places that have negotiated flat percentage discounts on all AWS spend.
This explanation seems plausible to me.
It's for people that can easily pump their AWS bill but not a new vendor.
It's like OpenAI can't help themselves from failing hard.
Wish I could fail hard enough to have a (nearly) $1T startup with some of both the smartest models and smartest people.
Care to elaborate how OpenAI is failing in your opinion?