Pricing

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Credits

Access to both classical and quantum computing resources is managed through the qBraid credits system, which operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. Each qBraid credit is worth $0.01 USD, so a quantum job costing $3.80 would subtract 380 credits from your qBraid balance. Credits can be purchased from your account page, or redeemed using an access key. You can check your current credit balance on your account page, in the qBraid Lab JOBS sidebar, or using the qBraid-CLI. Prices for both classical and quantum computing resources are subject to change.

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Quantum Computers (on-demand)

There are three pricing components for on-demand use of a quantum computer, or quantum processing unit (QPU), on qBraid: a per-minute fee, per-task fee, and per-shot fee. A shot is a single execution of a quantum algorithm on a QPU. For example, a shot is a single pass through each stage of a complete quantum circuit on a gate-based QPU from IonQ, Rigetti, or OQC, or the time evolution of a Hamiltonian on a QPU from QuEra. A task is a sequence of repeated shots based on the same circuit design or Hamiltonian. You define how many shots you want included in a task when you submit it.

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Pricing Structure

• Per-minute pricing: Applies to specific QPUs (e.g., Rigetti Ankaa-3 via Azure) where execution time is billed
• Per-task pricing: Consistent across most QPUs (typically 30 credits)
• Per-shot pricing: Varies by QPU type (1-8 credits for current offerings)

For gate-based QPUs, neither per-shot nor per-minute prices are affected by the number or type of gates used. Note that error mitigation on IonQ’s Aria QPU requires a minimum of 2,500 shots per task.

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Quantum Circuit Simulators

Verify your circuits using a simulator before you run it on a QPU, so you can fine-tune your circuit without incurring charges for QPU usage. Although the results from running the circuit on a simulator may not be identical to the results from running the circuit on a QPU, you can identify coding errors or configuration issues using a simulator. qBraid offers ten on-demand quantum circuit simulators for testing quantum algorithms:

• qBraid QIR Simulator: employs sparse state vector simulation based on arXiv:2105.01533.
• AWS State Vector 1 (SV1): serves as a general purpose quantum circuit simulator.
• AWS Density Matrix 1 (DM1): enables simulating the effect of noise on your circuits.
• AWS Tensor Network 1 (TN1): specializes in simulation of larger scale quantum systems.
• Rigetti QVM Simulator (Azure): Quantum Virtual Machine (QVM) open-source simulator.
• IonQ Simulator: supports “ideal” simulations as well as noise models for harmony (legacy), aria-1, aria-2, forte-1, and forte-enterprise-1.
• NEC Vector Annealer: executes proprietary algorithm for annealing processing on NEC’s vector supercomputer “SX-Aurora TSUBASA“
• QuEra QASM Simulator: noisy OpenQASM-based simulator with backend options including “cirq” (CPU) and “cirq-gpu” (NVIDIA H100).
• Quantinuum H1-1 Syntax Checker: Pre-execution validation tool
• Quantinuum H1-1 Emulator: High-accuracy H1 processor simulation (custom pricing)
• Pasqal Emulator: Neutral-atom quantum processor simulation (custom pricing)

All simulators automatically scale resources to ensure high-performance. Billing is based on a fixed per-task cost plus the duration of each simulation, charged per minute in one-millisecond increments, with a minimum billing duration of three seconds per simulation.

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CPUs + GPUs

All qBraid Lab compute instances are available to all users. CPU instances are billed using compute hours, while GPU instances are billed using credits.

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CPU Instances

CPU instances are included with your subscription plan and consume compute hours. Usage is tracked against your monthly compute hour allocation. See usage guide for more details on compute hour tracking.

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GPU Instances

GPU instances are billed per minute in credits. See GPUs for more details on launching and using GPU instances.