provider:ibm-open

IBM Quantum — Open Plan

IBM Heron r2 / Eagle systems · superconducting · 156 physical qubits · 99.70% 2Q fidelity

verified primary

Pricing model

Free tier with hard cap. 10 minutes QPU runtime per 28-day rolling window. The structural constraint is the cap, not the unit price.

1.Representative workload costs

Concrete circuit costs for common workload sizes. Where the pricing model is non-linear (per-program minimums, per-month subscriptions), the table surfaces the floor and break-even points.

Table 1 — Workload cost reference

Workload	Cost (USD)	Note
100-shot pilot circuit (1-2 seconds)	$0	Fits comfortably within free-tier budget.
Sustained research over 28 days at 10 min/day	Quota exhausted in 1 day	Open Plan is a one-shot-per-month resource, not a research engine.
180 min promo allocation over 12 months	$0	One-time March 2026 bump for any user who has run at least 20 minutes in the prior 12 months.

2.Structural hardware advantage

Access to IBM Heron r2 (156-qubit superconducting) with production fidelities (99.7% 2Q gate) via a no-credit-card free entry path. Lower-cost on-ramp than AWS Braket free credits.

3.Position in the 2026 stack

Production hardware, free tier. The most generous free-quantum-access offering in 2026 by a meaningful margin — no other major provider gives 10 minutes of real QPU time per month with no contract.

4.Best-fit workloads

Education and coursework
Algorithm validation against known small circuits
Hardware-aware compilation testing
Hackathon / workshop access

5.Pricing trap

Watch for: The 10-minute cap is rolling 28-day, not calendar month. Plan workloads accordingly — burning the budget in week 1 means waiting 21 days for refresh.

Verification note. 10 min QPU runtime per 28-day rolling window. One-time Mar 2026 promo: 180 min over 12 months for any user who has run at least 20 min in the prior year.

6.Source

https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/open-plan-updates · verified 2026-08-14