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ibm-quantum

IBM Quantum is IBM's quantum computing program — the operator of the IBM Quantum Platform (quantum.cloud.ibm.com), the publisher of the open-source Qiskit SDK, and the provider of the Qiskit Runtime REST API for submitting Sampler and Estimator primitive jobs to 100+ qubit Heron-generation QPUs and managed simulators. The platform combines an Apache-2.0 software stack (Qiskit, qiskit-ibm-runtime, qiskit-ibm-catalog, Qiskit Aer, Qiskit Serverless, Qiskit Functions) with a tiered access model (Open / Pay-As-You-Go / Flex / Premium / On-Premises) and is the longest-running commercial quantum computing API surface in the industry.

agent ready

Solid contracts, transparent operations, and an easy start — typically complete on four or five facets with one clear soft spot.

Kin Score

API Evangelist profiles ibm-quantum the way a machine reads it — 73 machine-readable artifacts across 11 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.

Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — ibm-quantum scores 69.2/100 (strong), with a separate agent-readiness read of 55/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.

Kin Score

This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 69.2/100 · strong
Contract Quality 18.4 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 14.3 / 20
Commercial Clarity 15.8 / 20
Operational Transparency 2.7 / 13
Governance 10.4 / 12
Discoverability 7.5 / 10
Agent readiness — 55/100 · agent ready
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 7 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

How we profile ibm-quantum

Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for ibm-quantum. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.

APIs 11

Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Qiskit Functions Catalog API

Premium / Flex-tier service for discovering and invoking abstracted Qiskit Functions — pre-packaged quantum-classical workflows (e.g. circuit cutting, error-mitigation pipelines...

Qiskit Transpiler as a Service API

Cloud-hosted, AI-augmented transpilation of OpenQASM 3 circuits down to IBM Quantum native gates and backend topology. Bundled with Flex and Premium plans.

ibm-quantum Accounts API

The Accounts API from ibm-quantum — 1 operation(s) for accounts.

ibm-quantum Analytics API

The Analytics API from ibm-quantum — 4 operation(s) for analytics.

ibm-quantum Backends API

The Backends API from ibm-quantum — 5 operation(s) for backends.

ibm-quantum Instances API

The Instances API from ibm-quantum — 3 operation(s) for instances.

ibm-quantum Jobs API

The Jobs API from ibm-quantum — 7 operation(s) for jobs.

ibm-quantum Sessions API

The Sessions API from ibm-quantum — 3 operation(s) for sessions.

ibm-quantum Tags API

The Tags API from ibm-quantum — 1 operation(s) for tags.

ibm-quantum Versions API

The Versions API from ibm-quantum — 1 operation(s) for versions.

ibm-quantum Workloads API

The Workloads API from ibm-quantum — 1 operation(s) for workloads.

Scroll within the panel for all 11 ·

Postman Collections 6

A runnable collection turns the contract into something a developer can execute in seconds. We profile them because the fastest way to trust an API is to make a real call against it.

Ready-to-run Postman collections for exercising this provider's APIs.

Open Collections 6

Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Arazzo Workflows 12

Real integrations are rarely a single call. Arazzo describes the multi-step sequences — auth, then create, then confirm — so both a human and an agent can follow the choreography, not just the endpoints.

Multi-step API workflows described with the Arazzo specification.

IBM Quantum Audit Workloads and Drill Into Job

List recent job-mode workloads from analytics, then pull the full job record and metrics for the most recent one.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Backend Readiness Preflight

Verify a backend is online, then gather its calibration properties and pulse defaults for circuit transpilation.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Cancel Running Job

Check a job's status and cancel it only if it is still queued or running.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Job Results and Logs

Poll a job to completion, then retrieve both its result payload and its execution logs.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum List Jobs and Inspect

List recent jobs, then pull the full details and execution metrics for the most recent one.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Negotiate Version and List Backends

Discover the live API version, then list accessible backends and check one backend's status using that version.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Pause Session and Confirm

Read a session's state, toggle whether it accepts new jobs, and confirm the change.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Select Backend and Submit Job

List accessible backends, inspect a chosen backend's configuration, and submit a job to it.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Session Run and Close

Open a Qiskit Runtime session, run a job inside it, then close the session.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Submit Job and Poll Results

Submit a Qiskit Runtime primitive job, poll until it reaches a terminal state, and fetch the final result.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Tag Job and Verify

Replace a job's tags, confirm the change on the job, and search the tag catalog for one of them.

ARAZZO

IBM Quantum Usage-Aware Job Submission

Check instance usage and remaining limit before submitting a job, skipping submission when the limit is reached.

ARAZZO

Scroll within the panel for all 12 ·

Pricing Plans 1

Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Rate Limits 1

Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Ibm Quantum Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Features 22

The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

100+ qubit IBM Quantum processing units (Heron r2 generation) accessible via Qiskit Runtime
Sampler primitive — circuit sampling for distribution-level results
Estimator primitive — expectation value evaluation for observables
Sessions for grouping primitive jobs with priority backend access
Error suppression and mitigation (dynamical decoupling, ZNE, PEC, readout mitigation, noise-aware compilation)
Qiskit SDK 2.x — open-source Python + Rust + C quantum circuit framework
qiskit-ibm-runtime Python client for the REST API
Qiskit C API for low-level integration in C/Rust applications
Qiskit Functions — pre-packaged quantum-classical workflows on Flex and Premium
Qiskit Transpiler as a Service — AI-augmented cloud transpilation
Qiskit Serverless — distributed quantum + classical execution
Qiskit Aer — high-performance noisy simulator
IBM Quantum Composer — drag-and-drop circuit builder
OpenQASM 2 and OpenQASM 3 program input
Date-based API versioning via the IBM-API-Version header
Global and EU-DE regional endpoints
IBM Cloud IAM bearer authentication, Service-CRN per instance
Five access plans — Open (free), Pay-As-You-Go, Flex, Premium, On-Premises
10 free minutes / 28-day rolling window on Open Plan, with an opt-in 180-minute / 12-month bonus
Analytics endpoints for FinOps reporting per instance
Apache 2.0 license across Qiskit core, qiskit-ibm-runtime, qiskit-ibm-catalog, ecosystem repos
Active ecosystem registry of community Qiskit-compatible projects

Scroll within the panel for all 22 ·

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Ibm Quantum Context

0 classes · 8 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 2

Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.

ibm-quantum API Rules

6 rules · 5 warnings

SPECTRAL

ibm-quantum API Rules

4 rules · 2 errors · 2 warnings

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 3

Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

IBM Quantum Backend

18 properties

JSON SCHEMA

IBM Quantum Runtime Job

0 properties

JSON SCHEMA

IBM Quantum Runtime Session

13 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 3

Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Security Posture 3

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Ibm Quantum Authentication

apiKey/http · 3 schemes

SECURITY

Ibm Quantum Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Ibm Quantum Vulnerability Disclosure

Hackerone · security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Ibm Quantum Agentic Access

30 operations · 8 acting

30 operations · 8 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Every other property we hold for ibm-quantum — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Learn 1

Tutorials, courses, talks, and written guidance

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/ibm-quantum · machine-readable index on apis.io