provider:ibm-premium

IBM Quantum — Premium

IBM Heron r2 / r3 (156Q), Nighthawk r1 (120Q) · superconducting · 156 physical qubits · 99.70% 2Q fidelity

verified primary

Pricing model

Published per-minute rate against a volume commitment. $48/min, the lowest of IBM's four tiers, against a 5,200-minute annual minimum, a $249,600 annual floor. Read directly from ibm.com/quantum/pricing.

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
Annual minimum (5,200 min)	$249,600	The published Premium floor: 5,200-minute annual minimum x $48/min, committed whether or not you use it.
Single VQE (~30 min)	$1,440	30 minutes at the $48/min Premium rate, drawn against the annual commitment.

2.Structural hardware advantage

Lowest per-minute rate in IBM's tier structure ($48 vs $96 PAYG, exactly 50% under). Aimed at buyers whose sustained annual usage justifies the $249,600 commitment.

3.Position in the 2026 stack

Enterprise tier, production. Designed for buyers who need both dedicated capacity and the priority scheduling SLAs.

4.Best-fit workloads

Production quantum-machine-learning workloads
Frontier-industry buyers (pharma, finance) with dedicated quantum teams
Hardware-priority requirements (e.g. algorithm benchmark scheduled on specific hardware)

5.Pricing trap

Watch for: The $48/min headline is the lowest rate, but the 5,200-minute annual minimum is a $249,600 floor you pay whether or not you use it: that equals 2,600 minutes of Pay-As-You-Go at $96, so Premium only wins above roughly 2,600 QPU-minutes a year. Model your annual usage before committing to the lower unit rate.

Verification note. IBM's pricing page states Premium begins at $48 USD per minute with a 5,200-minute annual minimum, a $249,600 annual floor. Read directly 2026-09-07.

6.Source

https://www.ibm.com/quantum/pricing · verified 2026-09-07