Setting up the IBM Cloud account

As an IBM Cloud account owner or administrator, you sign up for IBM watsonx.ai and set up payment for services in the IBM Cloud account.

These steps describe the typical tasks for an IBM Cloud account owner to set up the account for an organization:

Sign up for watsonx.ai.
Update your IBM Cloud account to add or update billing information.
(Optional) Configure restrictions for the account.

To sign up for watsonx.ai:

Go to Try IBM watsonx.ai or Try watsonx.governance.
Select the service region.
Agree to the terms, Data Use Policy, and Cookie Use.
Log in with your IBMid (usually an email address) if you have an existing IBM Cloud account. If you don't have an IBM Cloud account, click Create an IBM Cloud account to create a new account. You must enter a credit card to create a Pay-As-You-Go IBM Cloud account. However, you are not charged until you buy paid service plans.

Lite plans for Watson Studio and Watson Machine Learning are automatically provisioned for you.

Step 2: Update your IBM Cloud account

You can skip this step if your IBM Cloud account has billing information with a Pay-As-You-Go or a subscription plan.

You must update your IBM Cloud account in the following circumstances:

You have a Trial account from signing up for watsonx.
You have a Trial account that you registered through an academic institution.
You have a Lite account that you created before 25 October 2021.
You want to change a Pay-As-You-Go plan to a subscription plan.

Setting up a Pay-As-You-Go account

You set up a Pay-As-You-Go by adding a credit card number and billing information. You pay only for billable services that you use, with no long-term contracts or commitments. You can provision paid plans for all services in the IBM Cloud services catalog, including plans in the watsonx services catalog.

To set up a Pay-As-You-Go account:

From the watsonx navigation menu, select Administration > Account and billing > Account.
Click Manage in IBM Cloud.
Log in to IBM Cloud.
Select Account settings.
Click Add credit card and enter your credit card and billing information.
Click Create account to submit your information.

After your payment information is processed, your account is upgraded and you receive a monthly invoice for billable resource usage or instance fees.

Setting up a subscription account

With subscriptions, you commit to a minimum spending amount for a certain period and receive a discount on the overall cost. Subscriptions are limited to service plans in the watsonx catalog.

Subscription credits are activated using a unique code that you receive by email. To activate the subscription, you apply the subscription code to an account. Be careful when selecting the account, because after you apply the subscription to an account, you can't undo it.

To set up a watsonx subscription:

From the watsonx navigation menu, select Administration > Account and billing > Upgrade service plans.
On the Upgrade service plans page, click Contact sales.

Complete and submit the form to communicate with IBM Sales that you want to set up a subscription account for watsonx. An associate from IBM Sales will contact you to set up a subscription. When your subscription is ready, you receive an email from IBM containing a unique subscription code.

To apply the subscription code to your account:

Locate the unique code from the email that you received from IBM.
Log in to your IBM Cloud account, and select Manage > Account from the header. Be sure to select the correct account.
Select Account settings and locate the Subscription and feature codes section on the page.
Click Apply code.
Copy and paste the code from the email into the Apply a code field and click Apply.

Your subscription account is active and you can upgrade your watsonx.ai services.

Step 3: (Optional) Configure restrictions for the account

Complete these optional tasks to secure your account:

Restrict the scope of resources that are available in IBM watsonx to the current account. See Set the scope of resources.
Restrict access to specific IP addresses to protect the IBM Cloud account from unwanted access from unknown IP addresses. See Allow specific IP addresses.

Next steps

Parent topic: Setting up the platform for administrators