What it costs to run a quantum circuit in 2026: a vendor-neutral price reference.

1.Pricing models in 2026

Three pricing paradigms coexist. Per-shot models (AWS Braket across all providers) charge a flat task fee plus a per-shot fee, making a 10,000-shot Aria circuit cost approximately $300 and the equivalent Rigetti Cepheus circuit approximately $5 — a ratio of more than 60×, driven primarily by per-shot pricing differences across qubit technologies 1. Per-minute models (IBM Quantum) charge for QPU runtime in seconds, with effective rates of $96/min PAYG, $72/min Flex, $48/min Premium 34. Per-program models (Azure Quantum AQT formula) charge a minimum per execution plus separate fees for one-qubit and two-qubit gate shots, making minimum-charge floors load-bearing in cost estimation 2.

The implication for budget estimation: a headline shot rate cannot be compared meaningfully across Braket and Azure without computing the representative circuit. Where this paper cites a unit price, we additionally cite a representative circuit cost in Table 2.

2.Provider inventory

Table 1 — Cloud-accessible QPU offerings, 2026

Verified 2026-06-03. Annealer paradigm (D-Wave) is included for completeness but pricing is not directly comparable to gate-model machines. Pasqal Fresnel is priced in EUR (3,000/QPU-hr), converted at ~1.07 USD/EUR. Google Willow is research-access only and carries no published price.

3.Use-case cost reference

We tabulate representative circuit costs to make the per-shot and per-program rates concrete. A 100-shot pilot circuit on IonQ Forte via Braket costs $8.30; the same circuit on Rigetti Cepheus costs $0.34. A 200,000-shot VQE optimisation costs $6,000 on IonQ Aria but $85 on Rigetti, illustrating the cost-vs-fidelity trade-off that determines hardware choice for variational workloads 1.

Table 2 — Representative circuit costs (USD)

All Braket figures include the $0.30/task fee. Azure IonQ Aria minimum reflects error-mitigation-on default; mitigation-off floor is $12.42.

4.Two-qubit gate fidelity context

Headline shot prices conceal a fidelity-vs-cost trade-off. Per-shot superconducting access (Rigetti, IBM Heron) is cheaper but operates at ~99.1-99.7% two-qubit fidelity; trapped-ion access (IonQ, Quantinuum) operates at ~99.5-99.8% production fidelity, with research-grade demonstrations of 99.99% via electronic qubit control 8. For algorithms that require deep circuits, the higher-fidelity provider often produces useful results at fewer shots, partially offsetting the per-shot premium.

Table 3 — Reported two-qubit gate fidelities, production hardware

5.Notes on quote-only and bot-blocked sources

IBM's pricing page returned HTTP 403 to automated fetch tooling on 2026-06-03; the rates we report (PAYG $96/min, Flex $72/min, Premium $48/min) follow Moor Insights & Strategy's independent research note 4 and the IBM Flex Plan announcement blog 3. Production D-Wave Leap pricing has not been republished as a public list since 2023 industry coverage; we mark it quote-only rather than cite stale figures. Google Willow is accessible through a competitive early-access programme, selected by proposal (the latest cohort's submission deadline was 15 May 2026) 9, and is not commercially priced.

6.Re-verification cadence

Provider pricing pages are re-fetched every 90 days. The pre-deploy gate blocks publication of any change containing a stale dated row. All figures here carry a 2026-06-03 verification stamp.

7.Frequently asked questions

References

1. AWS Braket Pricing. Amazon Web Services. Accessed 2026-06-03. https://aws.amazon.com/braket/pricing/
2. Azure Quantum Pricing Plans. Microsoft Learn. Doc updated 2026-04-23, accessed 2026-06-03. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/quantum/pricing
3. IBM Quantum Flex Plan. IBM Quantum Blog, Q1 2026. https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/flex-plan
4. Anastasi, P. IBM's New Flex Plan Fills a Big Gap in Quantum Access Pricing. Moor Insights & Strategy, 2026. https://moorinsightsstrategy.com/research-notes/ibms-new-flex-plan-fills-a-big-gap-in-quantum-access-pricing/
5. Acharya, R. et al. Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold. Nature, December 2024. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08449-y
6. Microsoft & Quantinuum. 12 logical qubits + hybrid end-to-end chemistry simulation. Azure Quantum Blog, September 2024. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/quantum/2024/09/10/microsoft-and-quantinuum-create-12-logical-qubits-and-demonstrate-a-hybrid-end-to-end-chemistry-simulation/
7. Rigetti Computing. General Availability of 108-Qubit System. April 2026 press release. https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/04/08/rigetti-108-qubit-system-availability/
8. IonQ. Accelerating Towards Fault Tolerance: 99.99% Two-Qubit Gate. October 2025. https://www.ionq.com/blog/accelerating-towards-fault-tolerance-unlocking-99-99-two-qubit-gate
9. Google Quantum AI. Willow Early Access Program. Accessed 2026-06-03. https://quantumai.google/willowearlyaccess
10. QuEra Computing. Aquila device on AWS Braket. arXiv:2306.11727. https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.11727
11. D-Wave Quantum. Advantage2 General Availability. Press release, 2025. https://www.dwavequantum.com/company/newsroom/press-release/d-wave-announces-general-availability-of-advantage2-quantum-computer-its-most-advanced-and-performant-system/

Independent reference. No affiliate revenue. No vendor sponsorships. Corrections: oliver@digitalsignet.com.