How much does IBM Bob cost?

Bobcoin plans. Free 30 day trial with 50 Bobcoins and no payment. Pro $20 a month with 50 Bobcoins, Pro+ $60 with 180 and Ultra $200 with 1,000, monthly or annual with 20% off annual. Overage is opt in at $0.50 a Bobcoin. Enterprise is custom and annual, with pooled Bobcoins, packs at $500 per 1,000, team limits, single sign on and self hosting. Premium packages cost extra: DevSecOps $20, Java Modernization $20 and IBM i $40 a month; IBM Z is Enterprise only through sales.

Does IBM Bob support MCP and tool calling?

Full under the Agentic Index verification standard. IBM Bob publishes public evidence of Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, tool calling, and API or SDK extensibility for connecting agents to external tools. Evidence basis: Bob Shell acts as an Agent Client Protocol server, so IntelliJ, Neovim and Zed can run it as their agent, and its headless run command returns plain, JSON or streamed JSON output for scripts. Lifecycle hooks fire on session start, prompt su. Graded from public evidence only against the Agentic Index 14 point capability taxonomy. No vendor pays for placement.

Does IBM Bob have SOC 2, SSO and role based access control?

Full under the Agentic Index verification standard. IBM Bob publishes public evidence of enterprise security and identity controls, covering a compliance posture such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, single sign on (SSO or SAML), and role based access control (RBAC). Evidence basis: Enterprise plans sign in through SAML or OIDC single sign on and other plans through an IBMid, and teams carry flexible role assignments, admin managed API keys and device policies that enforce hooks, telemetry and update settings. Self hos. Graded from public evidence only against the Agentic Index 14 point capability taxonomy. No vendor pays for placement.

Can IBM Bob be self hosted or run in a private VPC?

Full under the Agentic Index verification standard. IBM Bob publishes public evidence of self hosted or private VPC deployment, along with data residency options for controlling where agent data is processed and stored. Evidence basis: The cloud service runs in US East, Frankfurt and Tokyo, though account, billing and team data stays in US East and region choice goes through IBM. Enterprise customers can install the platform on Red Hat OpenShift on premises or in their ow. Graded from public evidence only against the Agentic Index 14 point capability taxonomy. No vendor pays for placement.

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IBM Bob

Q: Who is IBM Bob for?

large enterprises modernizing Java, IBM i or mainframe code, regulated companies that need on premises or air gapped AI coding, IBM clients moving from watsonx Code Assistant, individual developers on monthly plans

Also known as: Bob Shell, BobShell, Project Bob, IBM Bob IDE, IBM watsonx Code Assistant, watsonx Code Assistant

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Coding agentfirst party productVerified 2026-11-08

Entry pricePro is $20 a month with 50 Bobcoins, Pro+ $60 with 180 and Ultra $200 with 1,000, with 20% off annual terms. Enterprise is custom and annual.Full pricing detail

IBM Bob is IBM's AI coding agent for the whole software lifecycle, running in its own IDE, the Bob Shell command line and other editors. It plans, edits, runs commands, spawns parallel subagents and background tasks, and opens pull requests under approval rules that admins can lock. Premium packages add security scanning and Java, IBM i and mainframe modernization. Plans start at $20 a month on Bobcoins, and Enterprise adds single sign on, analytics and self hosting, including air gapped installs.

IBM Bob is IBM's AI coding agent and development partner for the whole software lifecycle, sold by International Business Machines Corporation and generally available both as a cloud service and as a self hosted install. It is the successor to watsonx Code Assistant, whose clients get an adoption path, and its lead use is modernization: upgrading Java, moving older front ends to modern frameworks, and working on IBM i and mainframe code. More than 170,000 IBM employees use it internally.

Bob runs in its own desktop IDE built on VS Code, in the Bob Shell command line on macOS, Linux, Windows and IBM Z, and inside IntelliJ, Neovim and Zed through the Agent Client Protocol. In Agent mode it edits files, runs terminal commands, creates branches, commits and opens pull requests, while Plan mode writes a plan first and Ask mode only answers. It can spawn read only or full tool subagents in parallel, run several tasks in the background, follow workflows and to do lists, and switch modes partway through a task.

Each action can wait on an approval card or be auto approved by group, with allowed and denied command lists, rollback snapshots before file edits and admin policies that lock settings across a company. Bob connects to any MCP server, runs lifecycle hooks that can block a tool call, loads skills and custom modes, and runs headless with JSON output for pipelines. Premium packages add DevSecOps scanning and fixes, Java modernization, IBM i development and IBM Z modernization with their own modes and skills.

Pricing runs on Bobcoins, units of model usage. A 30 day trial with 50 Bobcoins needs no payment, Pro costs $20 a month with 50, Pro+ $60 with 180 and Ultra $200 with 1,000, with 20% off annual terms, and overage at $0.50 a Bobcoin is opt in. Enterprise is annual and custom, with pooled Bobcoins, team budgets, single sign on, Bobalytics adoption reporting and self hosting. Premium packages cost $20 to $40 a month each, and IBM Z is Enterprise only.

IBM does not train on customer prompts or code, holds payload data only in memory during a request, and shares ISO 27001 certificates and penetration test summaries under NDA. The cloud service runs in US East, Frankfurt and Tokyo, and Enterprise customers can install Bob on Red Hat OpenShift on premises, in their own cloud or fully air gapped, bringing models from Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Vertex or their own hardware.

It fits enterprises with Java, IBM i or mainframe estates that want a coding agent with central policy control, audit feeds and an on premises option, and developers who want an IDE and CLI agent at a fixed monthly price. It fits less well for teams that want to pick the model on the cloud service, need a SOC 2 report, or want an agent that starts on its own from issues, schedules or webhooks, since runs begin from a person or from a pipeline the customer builds.

Vendor details

Canonical URL

https://bob.ibm.com

Subcategory

Enterprise AI coding agent in its own IDE and CLI, with modernization packages for Java, IBM i and IBM Z

Funding status

Public company product. IBM Bob is sold by International Business Machines Corporation.

Company status

first party product

Use cases & customers

Primary use cases

agentic coding in an IDE and command lineJava version upgrades and front end modernizationIBM i and mainframe application modernizationsecurity scanning and fixes in the developer workflowheadless coding runs in CI pipelinesgoverned AI coding with central policies and audit

Target customers

large enterprises modernizing Java, IBM i or mainframe coderegulated companies that need on premises or air gapped AI codingIBM clients moving from watsonx Code Assistantindividual developers on monthly plans

Deployment options

SaaS in US East, Frankfurt and TokyoSelf hosted on Red Hat OpenShift on premises or in the customer's cloud (Enterprise)Air gapped install (Enterprise)Desktop IDE and CLI on macOS, Windows, Linux and IBM Z

Integrations

Any MCP server over stdio or streamable HTTP with OAuth; Git through local tooling with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps remotes; GitHub CLI for pull requests; GitHub Actions for DevSecOps pull request review; IBM documentation search for IBM i, z/OS, Db2 and watsonx; Red Hat and Instana; watsonx.governance; Splunk audit trail; OpenTelemetry; Agent Client Protocol for IntelliJ, Neovim and Zed; Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI and Vertex models on self hosted installs.

In practice

A bank's Java team uses the Java Modernization package to move a Java 8 service to Java 21. Bob plans the upgrade, edits the code, runs the build after each step for approval and writes unit tests for the changed classes.

A mainframe group on the Enterprise plan installs Bob on OpenShift in its own data center, air gapped, and uses Z Architect mode to map a COBOL application before planning which parts move to Java.

A platform team pushes a device policy that turns off auto approval for commands, feeds the audit trail to Splunk and watches Bobalytics to see how much committed code Bob wrote in each team.

Sources & related URLs

Related / legacy domains

https://bob.ibm.com/docs/shell https://www.ibm.com/products/ai-coding-agent/devsecops https://www.ibm.com/products/ai-coding-agent/java-modernization https://www.ibm.com/products/ai-coding-agent/ibm-i-modernization https://www.ibm.com/products/ai-coding-agent/mainframe-modernization https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-code-assistant https://www.ibm.com/docs/bobz/3.0.0

Research sources

Agentic Index coverage score

11.5 / 14 capabilities · 82%

Integrations & Tool Calling	Full
Any MCP server plugs in over stdio or streamable HTTP with OAuth sign in, configured globally or per project, with tools that can be auto approved one by one, and plugins can bundle their own MCP settings. No MCP servers come preinstalled, but the agent searches IBM documentation for IBM i, z/OS, Db2 and watsonx and reads Office files. Through local Git it works with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps remotes, creating branches, commits and pull requests, and it reaches Red Hat and Instana from the IDE. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/configuration/mcp/mcp-in-bobread 2026-11-08
Workflow Orchestration	Full
Subagents of an explore type, read only on a lighter model, or a general type with full tools can run in parallel, and each spawn waits for approval. Several tasks can run at once in the background while a developer keeps working, and long commands run as background processes. Plan mode loads a planning skill before work starts, workflows and to do lists structure longer jobs, and the agent can switch between Plan, Agent and Ask modes on its own partway through a task. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/features/subagentsread 2026-11-08
Knowledge Grounding & RAG	Partial
Symbol tools list, find and trace references through a codebase alongside search by pattern and file name, and developers add files, folders, problems, terminal output, commits, Git changes and web pages as context. Multi root workspaces span several folders, and a built in search covers IBM documentation for IBM i, z/OS, Db2 and watsonx. No index, embeddings or semantic search across a codebase or company documents is offered, apart from the enterprise wide application context sold in the IBM Z package. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/core-concepts/large-projectsread 2026-11-08
Human Oversight & Guardrails	Full
Every edit, command, MCP call, skill, subtask, subagent and mode switch can wait on an approval card, with options to approve once, approve for the whole task or edit the command first, or be auto approved by group. Allowed and denied command lists and an extra check on risky commands guard the terminal, snapshots taken before each file change allow rollback, and edits show as a diff first. Administrators can lock auto approval off across a company through device policies. Headless runs approve every tool, capped by cost and turn limits. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/features/auto-approving-actionsread 2026-11-08
Security, Identity & Governance	Full
Enterprise plans sign in through SAML or OIDC single sign on and other plans through an IBMid, and teams carry flexible role assignments, admin managed API keys and device policies that enforce hooks, telemetry and update settings. Self hosted installs authenticate through Keycloak with LDAP or Active Directory. Customer prompts and code are not used to train models and are held only in memory during a request. ISO 27001 certificates and penetration test summaries are shared under NDA, and no SOC 2 report for Bob is offered. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/faqread 2026-11-08
Observability & Auditability	Full
Bobalytics, on the Enterprise plan, reports adoption, the share of committed lines the agent wrote and Bobcoin spend by organization, team or user, with CSV export. An audit trail feeds Splunk through IBM support, enforced hooks can log every tool call, and device policies set OpenTelemetry export. The subagent panel shows tokens, cost and failed tools for each run, and Bob Shell exports tasks as Markdown or JSON. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/features/bobalyticsread 2026-11-08
Memory & State Persistence	Partial
Task history keeps each conversation so work can be reopened, stored only on the developer's machine, with unpinned tasks deleted after 30 days unless that window is changed or switched off, and long conversations are compacted automatically. No memory carries facts or preferences from one task to the next. Standing guidance lives in rules folders, an AGENTS.md file and custom instructions on modes, which a team writes and edits by hand. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/features/chat-interfaceread 2026-11-08
Deployment & Data Residency	Full
The cloud service runs in US East, Frankfurt and Tokyo, though account, billing and team data stays in US East and region choice goes through IBM. Enterprise customers can install the platform on Red Hat OpenShift on premises or in their own cloud account, including fully air gapped clusters, with single node OpenShift enough for a proof of concept. Bob Shell itself runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, z/OS UNIX System Services and Linux on IBM Z. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/security/data-residencyread 2026-11-08
Prebuilt Agents / Templates / Packs	Full
Four premium packages extend the agent. DevSecOps adds Trivy, Opengrep and KICS scans, secret and supply chain checks, Ansible and Terraform skills and fixes a developer can apply from a finding. Java Modernization upgrades Java 8 or 11 to 17, 21 or 25 and moves older JSF and Struts front ends to React, Angular or Vue. The IBM i package brings developer and database modes for the platform's own languages and Db2 for i, and the IBM Z package adds Z Code and Z Architect modes for mainframe languages such as COBOL and assembler, with workflows such as planning a move to Java. Sourceibm.com/products/ai-coding-agent/java-modernizationread 2026-11-08
Triggers & Channel Coverage	Partial
Work starts from a person in the IDE chat, the Bob Shell chat or another editor connected through the Agent Client Protocol, or from a headless run that a team wires into its own pipelines or scheduled jobs with an API key. A pull request review started by a comment through GitHub Actions is part of the DevSecOps package and announced for November. There are no built in schedules, webhooks or issue triggers, and hooks send events outward without starting new work. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/account/api-keysread 2026-11-08
Model Flexibility & Routing	Partial
On the cloud service a router picks the model for each task from Fast, Premium and Ultra tiers, drawing on Anthropic Claude, Mistral open models, IBM Granite and fine tuned models, and neither developers nor administrators can choose or restrict which models it uses. Self hosted Enterprise installs bring their own models through Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Vertex or any OpenAI compatible service, or run NVIDIA Nemotron and Poolside models fully on premises. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/faqread 2026-11-08
APIs / SDKs / MCP Extensibility	Full
Bob Shell acts as an Agent Client Protocol server, so IntelliJ, Neovim and Zed can run it as their agent, and its headless run command returns plain, JSON or streamed JSON output for scripts. Lifecycle hooks fire on session start, prompt submit, before and after each tool and on stop, run a command or call an HTTPS endpoint, and can block a tool call. Skills, custom modes, slash commands, plugins and any MCP server extend it further, though there is no public REST API or SDK. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/configuration/lifecycle-hooksread 2026-11-08
Testing, Debugging & Optimization	Full
A built in review checks a branch's changes, lists findings in a panel and offers a fix the developer reviews before accepting, and tips flag functions with high cyclomatic complexity. The DevSecOps package scans changes for vulnerabilities, secrets and misconfiguration, and the Java package writes unit tests for upgraded code. Security scans only read code, and SafeWrite, which blocks unsafe writes as they happen, is experimental and off by default. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/features/code-reviewsread 2026-11-08
Browser / Computer-use	Partial
A browser tool for navigating and testing web pages appears only when the experimental web fetch setting is turned on, and that setting is off by default, as is the experimental web search tool. Chat accepts images a developer attaches, but no computer use or screenshot driven agent is offered, so browser work stays an opt in experiment for teams that switch it on. Sourcebob.ibm.com/docs/ide/features/modesread 2026-11-08

The Agentic Index coverage score grades every vendor Full, Partial or Not documented against the same 14 buyer facing capabilities, from public evidence only. Each capability links to how all vendors in the index score on it. How this evidence is graded

Pricing

Pro is $20 a month with 50 Bobcoins, Pro+ $60 with 180 and Ultra $200 with 1,000, with 20% off annual terms. Enterprise is custom and annual.

Per user plans that include a monthly allotment of Bobcoins, units of model usage whose cost depends on the model tier the router picks.

Trial available

Included quota

Trial and Pro include 50 Bobcoins, Pro+ 180 and Ultra 1,000 each billing cycle; Enterprise pools Bobcoins across the organization with limits per team and user.

What is public

Prices and Bobcoin allotments for Trial, Pro, Pro+ and Ultra, overage and pack rates, premium package prices and the annual discount.

Billing mechanics

Per user subscriptions with Bobcoin allotments that reset each billing cycle, opt in overage billed per Bobcoin, and prepaid Bobcoin packs on Enterprise.

Cost watchouts

Premium packages cost extra per user: DevSecOps $20, Java Modernization $20 and IBM i $40 a month, and IBM Z requires Enterprise. Once overage is turned on it stays on until the month ends.

Variable cost rationale

Plans carry a fixed Bobcoin allotment and overage is off unless a user turns it on, but each task's cost depends on the model tier the router chooses, so heavy work can exhaust an allotment quickly.

Additional watchouts

Single sign on, Bobalytics and self hosting need Enterprise, which is annual and priced by quote.

Overage / add-ons

Overage is opt in at $0.50 per Bobcoin, cannot be switched off for the rest of the month once on, and resets to off each month. Enterprise Bobcoin packs cost $500 per 1,000 and overage packs $550 per 1,000, expiring a year after purchase.

Sales call required

Mixed (some tiers require a call)

Free / trial

Free 30 day trial with 50 Bobcoins and no payment required; a subscription is needed to trial a premium package.

Lowest paid plan

Pro at $20 a month with 50 Bobcoins

Commercial notes

IBM Bob is sold by IBM through the IBM store for individual plans and through IBM sales for Enterprise and IBM Z.

Key ambiguities

bob.ibm.com shows a standing 20% annual saving while ibm.com frames it as a promotion ending 30 November 2026, and ibm.com pricing lists Bobalytics as coming soon while the docs show it live on Enterprise.

Cancellation / refund

Monthly or annual self serve plans; Enterprise is annual only.

Support SLA / resale

Enterprise adds IBM support, seat and Bobcoin budget tracking and team level limits.

Missing data

Enterprise and IBM Z pricing, and the Bobcoin cost of a typical task by model tier.

Agentic Index verified 2026-11-08

Official pricing page Docs

Data confidence: high