IBM Bob Pricing and Packages for IBM i
What IBM Bob and the Bob Premium Package for i cost per month, what each tier includes, and what an IBM i shop is actually buying at each level.
IBM Bob for IBM i is priced as a per-seat monthly subscription with the IBM i-specific Premium Package sold as an add-on. As reported by IT Jungle at the June 24, 2026 general availability of Bob 2.0 and the Premium Package for i, the add-on runs $20 to $40 per month, Bob Pro with Premium runs $60 to $80 per month, Bob Pro+ with Premium is $100 per month, and Bob Ultra with Premium is $240 per month. Those are reported ranges, not an IBM price list, and the spread inside each range reflects term and volume.
IBM Bob pricing for IBM i, as reported at the June 24, 2026 GA
| Package | Reported monthly price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Bob Premium Package for i (add-on) | $20 to $40 | The IBM i layer: about 40 skills and workflows and about 30 tools that read and write QSYS and the IFS, run CL commands and SQL, launch 5250 sessions, manage library lists, and support a RAG workflow. Adds a Developer Mode for RPG, COBOL, DDS, SQL, and CL and a Database Mode for Db2 for i SQL work. |
| Bob Pro with Premium | $60 to $80 | The entry tier most IBM i developers would start on. Bob 2.0 agent, plan, and ask modes with the Premium Package for i included. |
| Bob Pro+ with Premium | $100 | Higher usage allowance on the same Bob 2.0 foundation with the Premium Package for i. |
| Bob Ultra with Premium | $240 | The top tier, aimed at developers running long agentic sessions, subagents, and large modernization workflows all day. |
Source: IT Jungle, July 13, 2026, reporting IBM's published tiers at GA. Confirm current list price and term options with IBM or an IBM Business Partner before budgeting.
What changed on June 24, 2026
Two things shipped the same day. Bob 2.0 replaced the separate 1.0 architectures with one foundation: a 270,000-token context window, parallel tool calling that IBM says cut typical tasks from about 30 seconds to under 10, native tool calling instead of XML wrapping, subagents for parallel work, native handling of .docx, .xlsx and .pdf files, a rollback feature that no longer depends on Git checkpoints, repeatable workflows, and three operating modes: agent, plan, and ask.
The Bob Premium Package for i is the part an IBM i shop is really paying for. It is what lets Bob work with source where it lives instead of requiring a developer to pull members down to a PC first. Tim Rowe of IBM Rochester put the reason plainly at launch: source code is on the IBM i, so why can't I work with my source code where it lives.
How to read the tiers
Add-on only
If your shop already licenses Bob for other languages, the $20 to $40 add-on is the whole IBM i cost. Everything IBM i-specific lives in the Premium Package, not in the base tiers.
Pro with Premium
One RPG developer doing explanation, documentation, and fixed-to-free conversion a few hours a day fits here. Usage allowances, not features, separate Pro from Pro+.
Ultra with Premium
Priced for a developer who runs Bob continuously in agent mode with subagents. At $240 a month it costs less than a day of contract RPG time, which is the comparison IBM wants you to make.
What the price does not include
Bob is a developer tool, so the subscription buys the seat, not the outcome. It does not include IBM i software maintenance, the DevOps and lifecycle tooling from vendors such as ARCAD Software or Fresche Solutions that most modernization projects still use, UI modernization from a vendor like Profound Logic, or the testing budget that any RPG conversion project consumes. It also does not include the Power hardware conversation: Bob runs on the developer's workstation and works against the IBM i over a connection, so it does not require Power10 or Power11 and does not use Matrix Math Acceleration.
One published customer number worth keeping in the file: IBM's July 15, 2026 Power announcement cites Heartland Co-Op reporting a 60 percent faster time for developers new to the platform to understand complex applications using the Premium Package. That is a customer-reported figure inside an IBM press release, not an independent study, so treat it as an upper bound to test against, not a baseline.
Prices on this page are the ranges reported at GA on June 24, 2026 and were last checked on September 2, 2026. IBM has changed Bob packaging twice since the March 24, 2026 1.0 release. For the cost side of a full modernization project, including where a Bob subscription sits next to vendor tooling and testing, see the AS/400 Software Pricing site.