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You can rent Quantum computing time from IBM cloud today: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/products https://www.ibm.com/quantum/products https://quantum.cloud.ibm.

by esseph 7mo ago

You can rent Quantum computing time from IBM cloud today: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/products https://www.ibm.com/quantum/products https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/docs/en/guides/plans-overview https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/docs/en/guides/plans-overview I have NOT used it, but the idea is interesting.

AlexCoventry 7mo ago
You can rent it, but it's basically worthless at this stage.
- cbm-vic-20 7mo ago
  Is there anything you can do on a rented QC that you can't do cheaper on a simulated QC on a "classical" CPU/GPU today?
  - AlanYx 7mo ago
    No. They're a decent playground for prototyping hybrid algorithms but even that is limited. No one has yet published a hybrid algorithm on a rentable QC provider that has better benchmark performance than a modern CPU/GPU implementation.
  - t312227 7mo ago
    hello, yes ... especially if you want to execute quantum-circuits which use a lot of qubits. why!? one approach of the simulation of quantum-computers rely on the so called "state vector" of the machine, and its memory-usage grows exponentially. for example qiskit AER * https://qiskit.github.io/qiskit-aer/stubs/qiskit_aer.StatevectorSimulator.html# https://qiskit.github.io/qiskit-aer/stubs/qiskit_aer.Stateve... just as an example: for 32 qubits, the simulator needs 64 GB RAM =?> double the RAM for each additional qubit so: for 36 qubits, the simulator needs 1 TB RAM :) so it gets pretty "costly" to do simulations rather quickly ... just my 0.02€
- pathOf_aFineMan 7mo ago
  there's still a long road to commercial applications but today's hardware is simulating quantum systems beyond the scale of classical methods, for example [1]; an interesting line of work opposite to this can be found in those who improve classical methods towards such examples [2], but these are only developed because of the existing quantum hardware Really though, today's IBM hardware is good fun to play with, eg for generating moderately large GHZ states [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.26845 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.26845 [2]https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14887 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14887
t312227 7mo ago
hello, as always: imho (!) i've used the ibm quantum platform together with python/qiskit during my last project - which was something like: simulate quantum-networks on "real" quantum-computers... ibm's support, introductions / documentation anbd usability of the platform is really great. idk ... not comparable / much better than most of the quantum-computing hardware startups i know / looked at. of course, its easy if you have "deep pockets" like ibm does ... ;)) ok, back to the quantum platform: it had a free-tier on the "old" quantum-platform - until july 2025: 10 minutes of compute on a set of machines - back then up to 127 qubits - per month ... no identification necessary / just an email-address. sadly this "very generous" free-tier was killed of during the transition to the all new "quantum cloud platform" during spring/summer 2025 ... and it really works like a charm :) just my 0.02€

by esseph 7mo ago

AlexCoventry 7mo ago

You can rent it, but it's basically worthless at this stage.

cbm-vic-20 7mo ago
Is there anything you can do on a rented QC that you can't do cheaper on a simulated QC on a "classical" CPU/GPU today?
- AlanYx 7mo ago
  No. They're a decent playground for prototyping hybrid algorithms but even that is limited. No one has yet published a hybrid algorithm on a rentable QC provider that has better benchmark performance than a modern CPU/GPU implementation.
- t312227 7mo ago
  hello, yes ... especially if you want to execute quantum-circuits which use a lot of qubits. why!? one approach of the simulation of quantum-computers rely on the so called "state vector" of the machine, and its memory-usage grows exponentially. for example qiskit AER * https://qiskit.github.io/qiskit-aer/stubs/qiskit_aer.StatevectorSimulator.html# https://qiskit.github.io/qiskit-aer/stubs/qiskit_aer.Stateve... just as an example: for 32 qubits, the simulator needs 64 GB RAM =?> double the RAM for each additional qubit so: for 36 qubits, the simulator needs 1 TB RAM :) so it gets pretty "costly" to do simulations rather quickly ... just my 0.02€
pathOf_aFineMan 7mo ago
there's still a long road to commercial applications but today's hardware is simulating quantum systems beyond the scale of classical methods, for example [1]; an interesting line of work opposite to this can be found in those who improve classical methods towards such examples [2], but these are only developed because of the existing quantum hardware Really though, today's IBM hardware is good fun to play with, eg for generating moderately large GHZ states [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.26845 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.26845 [2]https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14887 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14887

t312227 7mo ago

hello, as always: imho (!) i've used the ibm quantum platform together with python/qiskit during my last project - which was something like: simulate quantum-networks on "real" quantum-computers... ibm's support, introductions / documentation anbd usability of the platform is really great. idk ... not comparable / much better than most of the quantum-computing hardware startups i know / looked at. of course, its easy if you have "deep pockets" like ibm does ... ;)) ok, back to the quantum platform: it had a free-tier on the "old" quantum-platform - until july 2025: 10 minutes of compute on a set of machines - back then up to 127 qubits - per month ... no identification necessary / just an email-address. sadly this "very generous" free-tier was killed of during the transition to the all new "quantum cloud platform" during spring/summer 2025 ... and it really works like a charm :) just my 0.02€