Microsoft Foundry

Model

1. Microsoft FoundryCoreModel APIs: Core

   Model APIs, core. Foundry Models lists more than 10,000 models from Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and others, with Azure OpenAI models sold directly by Azure. Usage bills per token or per provisioned throughput unit on Azure.

2. SupportsModel gateway: Supports

   Model gateway, supports. Model router is a deployable model that sends each prompt to the most suitable underlying model, and spillover moves excess provisioned traffic to a standard deployment. Use LiteLLM or OpenRouter for models outside Foundry.

Build

1. Orchestration: Supports

   Orchestration, supports. Foundry Agent Service runs declarative prompt agents and hosted agents that run the team's own code, including Microsoft Agent Framework, LangGraph and Semantic Kernel. The framework itself stays the team's choice.

2. Tool use: Supports

   Tool use, supports. Agents call MCP servers, OpenAPI tools, Azure Logic Apps connectors and knowledge tools for Azure AI Search, SharePoint and Microsoft Fabric. Tools outside Azure still need their own hosting.

Data

1. Retrieval: Supports

   Retrieval, supports. Foundry IQ, Azure AI Search, File Search and Grounding with Bing Search cover managed retrieval for agents. Keep a separate vector store for custom retrieval.

Evaluate

1. Evaluation: Supports

   Evaluation, supports. Built-in evaluators score agents for coherence, relevance, groundedness and safety. Use LangSmith or Braintrust to compare evaluations across clouds and model vendors.

Operate

1. Observability: Supports

   Observability, supports. Foundry traces agent interactions with OpenTelemetry and sends resource logs to Azure Monitor. Use an observability tool for models and agent steps outside Azure.

2. Cloud deployment: Core

   Cloud deployment, core. Inference runs inside the Azure subscription with Entra ID, role-based access control and network isolation. Global, Data Zone and regional deployment types, quota tiers and provisioned throughput set residency, price and capacity.

3. Guardrails: Supports

   Guardrails, supports. Foundry Guardrails, previously content filters, run synchronously as the service processes prompts and generates content. Prompt-injection testing and red-teaming stay with a dedicated security product.