Does it cost anything to run Qiskit on Open Quantum?

No. During beta, jobs on Qiskit 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 Qiskit?

Methods: State vector, density matrix, stabilizer, MPS, and more. Noise modeling: Noiseless simulation.

How do I run a circuit on Qiskit?

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

Can I run the same circuit on real hardware?

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

Qiskit Aer Simulator (Free, Beta) on Open Quantum

Name: Qiskit
Brand: IBM

Specifications

Provider

IBM

Simulation Method

State vector, density matrix, stabilizer, MPS, and more

Qubit Capacity

Up to 32 qubits

Noise Modeling

Noiseless simulation

Best For

Circuits up to 32 qubits, designed to give you fast, exact simulation with the standard simulator of the Qiskit ecosystem.

About Qiskit

Qiskit Aer is IBM’s high-performance simulator for the Qiskit ecosystem, and surveys report that more than half of quantum developers use Qiskit. Its core is written in C++ for speed, it is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and IBM uses it to power local testing in Qiskit Runtime, so it is the simulator many Qiskit developers already know. On Open Quantum it runs on CPU and lets Aer pick the simulation method by default, with exact state vector, density matrix, stabilizer, extended stabilizer, matrix product state, and unitary methods one setting away. Submit circuits from any supported framework, then run the same code, unchanged, on real QPUs when you are ready.

Configuring Qiskit

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

engine

Which Aer method runs your circuit, all on CPU: automatic (the default), which lets Aer choose, or state vector, density matrix, stabilizer, extended stabilizer, matrix product state, or unitary. State vector is exact. Density matrix and unitary need much more memory, stabilizer is only correct for Clifford circuits, and MPS is approximate.

bond_dimension

Used only with the matrix product state engine. Automatic (the default) leaves the bond dimension uncapped; custom sets a maximum with max_bond_dim (default 128).

Running Qiskit 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