Does it cost anything to run Cirq on Open Quantum?

No. During beta, jobs on Cirq run on the Public Compute tier with no credits used. You can prototype and debug as much as you need before spending anything on real hardware.

Which simulation methods are available with Cirq?

Methods: State vector (qsim) and matrix product state (quimb). Noise modeling: Noiseless simulation.

How do I run a circuit on Cirq?

Create a free Open Quantum account, write your circuit in any supported framework, and select the Cirq backend in the job builder. Open Quantum handles the translation, so there is no separate Google setup to manage.

Can I run the same circuit on real hardware?

Yes. The same code you run on Cirq runs unchanged on real QPUs from IonQ, Rigetti, IQM, and AQT, with $50 of free quantum compute to start.

Cirq Simulators (Free, Beta) on Open Quantum

Name: Cirq
Brand: Google

Specifications

Provider

Google

Simulation Method

State vector (qsim) and matrix product state (quimb)

Qubit Capacity

Up to 32 qubits

Noise Modeling

Noiseless simulation

Best For

Circuits up to 32 qubits, designed to give you fast state-vector simulation with the standard simulator of the Cirq ecosystem.

About Cirq

The Cirq simulators on Open Quantum pair two engines. qsim is Google’s optimized state-vector simulator, and the engine Google used to produce the cross-entropy benchmark results in its 2019 quantum supremacy paper. Its core is written in C++ with gate fusion, AVX/FMA vector operations, and OpenMP multithreading, and both Cirq and qsim are open source under the Apache 2.0 license. For circuits too large for a full state vector, a matrix product state engine built on quimb compresses the quantum state instead of storing every amplitude. Submit circuits from any supported framework, then run the same code, unchanged, on real QPUs when you are ready.

Configuring Cirq

Options you can set when you create a job on Cirq.

engine

Which engine runs your circuit, both on CPU: qsim (exact state-vector simulation, the default) or MPS (approximate matrix product state simulation with quimb, for circuits too large for a full state vector).

max_bond_dim

Used only with the MPS engine. Sets the maximum bond dimension (default 128). Higher values are more accurate but slower.

Running Cirq on Open Quantum

Free during beta

Simulators run on the Public Compute tier with no credits used while in beta. Prototype and debug as much as you need before spending anything on real hardware.

See all simulators