specification: API Commons FinOps
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/FinOps
provider: IBM Quantum
providerId: ibm-quantum
created: '2026-05-25'
modified: '2026-05-25'
description: FinOps view of IBM Quantum Platform billing surface, aligned with the FinOps Foundation framework and FOCUS data spec. Maps the platform's plan structure (Open / Pay-As-You-Go / Flex / Premium / On-Premises) and the Qiskit Runtime Analytics API onto FinOps capabilities.
sources:
  - https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/docs/en/guides/plans-overview
  - https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/api/openapi.json
  - https://focus.finops.org/
domains:
  - id: understand-usage-and-cost
    name: Understand Usage and Cost
    capabilities:
      - id: data-ingestion
        name: Data ingestion
        artifacts:
          - GET /v1/analytics/usage — per-instance usage analytics (Qiskit Runtime REST API)
          - GET /v1/workloads — active workloads per instance
          - GET /v1/jobs/{id}/metrics — per-job execution metrics
          - IBM Cloud billing exports (via IBM Cloud Billing service)
        focus_columns:
          - BilledCost
          - EffectiveCost
          - UsageQuantity
          - UsageUnit
          - ChargePeriodStart
          - ChargePeriodEnd
          - ServiceName
          - SkuId
      - id: allocation
        name: Cost allocation
        artifacts:
          - Service-CRN per Qiskit Runtime instance is the natural cost-allocation key
          - Tags on jobs (PUT /v1/jobs/{id}/tags) for project- or workload-level tagging
          - IBM Cloud resource groups for org-level grouping
      - id: anomaly-management
        name: Anomaly management
        artifacts:
          - Job-level metrics and analytics endpoints surface unusual minute consumption
          - Instance configuration limits enforce hard caps
  - id: quantify-business-value
    name: Quantify Business Value
    capabilities:
      - id: forecasting
        name: Forecasting
        notes: Premium subscriptions have a known annual minute floor; Flex plans pre-purchase a fixed minute pool; PAYG forecasts use historical seconds-of-quantum-time from /v1/analytics/usage.
      - id: budgeting
        name: Budgeting
        notes: Best modeled by allocating per-instance minute or second budgets and enforcing them at the instance-configuration level.
  - id: optimize-usage-and-cost
    name: Optimize Usage and Cost
    capabilities:
      - id: workload-optimization
        name: Workload optimization
        artifacts:
          - Qiskit Transpiler as a Service (Premium / Flex)
          - Session API (POST /v1/sessions) for grouping primitive jobs and reducing queue time
          - Error mitigation choice (dynamical decoupling, ZNE, PEC) trades shots for cost
      - id: rate-optimization
        name: Rate optimization
        notes: Choose between PAYG ($/second), Flex ($72/min, $30k floor), or Premium ($48/min, annual commitment) based on annualized minute usage. Reuse sessions to reduce overhead.
      - id: licensing-saas
        name: Licensing & SaaS
        notes: Premium and Flex include Qiskit Functions and Qiskit Transpiler as a Service. On-Premises is a dedicated system contract.
  - id: manage-finops-practice
    name: Manage the FinOps Practice
    capabilities:
      - id: education-enablement
        name: Education & enablement
        artifacts:
          - docs.quantum.ibm.com plans overview
          - IBM Quantum learning courses on plan selection
billing_model:
  unit_of_value: quantum compute time (seconds for PAYG, minutes for Flex/Premium)
  granularity_of_billing: per-second (PAYG), per-minute pool drawdown (Flex/Premium)
  primary_dimensions:
    - plan (open | payg | flex | premium | on-premises)
    - instance (Service-CRN)
    - region (global vs eu-de)
    - QPU / backend
    - primitive (sampler | estimator)