Do I need the Premium Package for i, or is base Bob enough?

If the work is IBM i work, you need the package. Base Bob is a general-purpose agentic IDE that can read RPG the way it reads any other text. Everything that makes it an IBM i tool arrives with the Premium Package for i: the tools that read and write QSYS and the IFS, run CL and SQL, launch a 5250 session and manage library lists, plus the Developer Mode and the Db2 for i Database Mode. Without the add-on, a developer is copying source down to a workstation and losing the context that made Bob interesting in the first place.

Which IBM Bob plan should a small IBM i shop start on?

Start on the free 30-day trial, then Pro with the Premium Package for i attached. The trial and Pro carry the same 50 monthly Bobcoins, so a real trial tells you whether 50 is enough for the work you actually do. Run it against your worst legacy program rather than a small one, because consumption scales with the size of what Bob has to read. If the trial burns through the allowance in the first week, you already have your answer about which plan to buy.

Does a more expensive Bob plan give better IBM i capability?

IBM's published plan table separates Pro, Pro+ and Ultra by monthly Bobcoin allowance, not by IBM i capability, and the Premium Package for i attaches to all three at the same $40 per month. On the published information, moving up a plan buys you more consumption rather than more function. IBM does not spell out whether anything else differs between the plans, so if you are buying for a team, get that confirmed in writing rather than assuming the published table is the whole contract.

Which IBM Bob Package for IBM i? Plans, Premium Add-On, Bobcoins

IBM Bob is sold as an ordinary monthly subscription with an IBM i add-on attached: three published plans running from $20 a month to $200, plus a $40 per month Premium Package for i. Our sibling pricing site keeps the full table, including Bobcoin allowances and overage rates, at pricing.as400software.com.

The table is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that the Premium Package for i costs the same $40 whether you attach it to the cheapest plan or the most expensive one, and every IBM i-specific thing Bob can do arrives inside that add-on. Which means the plan sitting underneath it is not a decision about what Bob can do on IBM i. It is a decision about how much of it you intend to do in a month.

What the Premium Package for i actually gives a developer

The Premium Package for i shipped alongside Bob 2.0 on June 24, 2026. Launch coverage puts it at roughly 40 curated skills and agentic workflows and roughly 30 tools built specifically for IBM i; IBM's own announcement describes the skills and workflows without giving a count. In practice it breaks into four things a developer will notice on day one.

It talks to the machine

Read and write QSYS and the IFS, run CL commands and SQL, launch a 5250 session, manage library lists. This is the change that matters most. Before the package, Bob worked on source pulled down to a workstation, which is a strange way to treat a platform where the source has always lived on the machine that runs it.

Developer Mode

The RPG and COBOL side of the job: explaining existing programs, converting fixed-format RPG to free-format, refactoring, generating RPG, CL, COBOL and DDS, writing documentation, and producing unit tests for code that has never had any.

Db2 for i Database Mode

A separate mode aimed at query analysis, optimization and troubleshooting against Db2 for i. This is the piece with the least public detail and the most room to surprise you, because SQL performance work on this platform has always been specialist territory.

Skills and workflows

The curated set is what turns a general model into something that knows IBM i conventions without being told them every prompt. It is also the part you cannot inspect before buying, which is what the free trial is for.

Nothing in that list is available on base Bob. If you are evaluating Bob for IBM i work and someone quotes you the $20 Pro plan, that quote is missing the only component that makes it an IBM i product.

The plan choice is a consumption decision

Bob is metered in Bobcoins. Each plan includes a monthly allowance that resets and does not carry over, and past the allowance individual plans bill overage at $0.50 per Bobcoin. Because the $40 package price is identical across plans, it cancels out of any comparison between them, and the whole question collapses into arithmetic you can do on the back of a napkin.

Where each plan stops being the cheap option

Plan	Monthly Bobcoins	Cheaper than the plan below it until
Pro	50	130 Bobcoins a month
Pro+	180	460 Bobcoins a month
Ultra	1,000	Top published plan

Derived from IBM's published plan prices and the $0.50 per Bobcoin overage rate, read 2026-09-02. Pro at $20 plus overage equals Pro+ at $60 once monthly use reaches 130 coins. Pro+ plus overage equals Ultra at $200 once use reaches 460. Above those points the larger plan is the cheaper one, which makes an upgrade a cost decision rather than an upgrade.

IBM does not publish how many Bobcoins a typical IBM i task consumes, and it would be close to meaningless if it did. Consumption tracks the compute a job needed, so having Bob document a 90,000-line program is not the same load as generating a display file. That is the honest limit on any advice anyone can give you here, including this article.

Which package fits which shop

Evaluating, one developer

Free 30-day trial, then Pro with the Premium Package for i. The trial carries the same 50 monthly Bobcoins as Pro, so it is an honest preview of the plan you would actually buy. Point it at your ugliest program, not a tidy one.

One or two developers, occasional work

Pro with the package, $60 a month per seat, and watch the overage line for two months before deciding anything. Documentation and code-explanation runs on old programs are the heaviest thing most small shops will throw at it.

An active modernization project

Pro+ with the package. If a developer is using Bob as a daily tool during a fixed-to-free-format conversion, 50 coins will not last, and past 130 coins a month Pro plus overage already costs more than Pro+ does.

A team, or a long project

Get the charge metric in writing first. IBM's pricing page shows a monthly figure with no stated user or seat unit, and there is no published annual rate for the IBM i package. Enterprise plans are quote-only, and that is where Bobcoin volume and any committed-spend terms get negotiated.

What changed from Bob 1.0 to Bob 2.0

Bob 1.0 reached general availability in March 2026. Bob 2.0 landed June 24 with the Premium Package for i, and the changes are the kind that matter more on a 40-year-old codebase than they would on a greenfield project.

Bob 1.0 compared with Bob 2.0

Capability	Bob 1.0	Bob 2.0
Context window	200,000 tokens	270,000 tokens
Tool calling	Not parallel	Parallel and native, with tasks that took 30 seconds reported under 10
Subagents	Not available	Deployed automatically, working in parallel with a clean context window
Undo	Checkpoints	Rollback at the task, conversation and individual tool call level
Operating modes	No mode selection documented	Three modes: agent, plan and ask
IBM i system access	Source pulled to a workstation	Live QSYS, IFS and Db2 for i access with the Premium Package for i

Feature comparison from IT Jungle's July 13, 2026 coverage of the 2.0 and Premium Package launch. The context window number is the one to notice on this platform: a single large RPG program plus its copybooks can eat a small context window before the agent has understood anything.

One caveat from the launch coverage worth carrying into a purchase conversation: the IDE shipped on June 24, but the shell environment for Bob 2.0 had not shipped as of mid-July 2026. If a headless or scripted use of Bob is part of your plan rather than a developer sitting in the IDE, confirm its current status with IBM before you build a project around it.

What is worth confirming before you buy

The published productivity figures all come from IBM and its customers rather than independent testing. Heartland Co-Op estimates 60 percent faster time for new-to-platform developers to understand complex applications with the Premium Package for i. A VP at M.R. Williams described an investigation and documentation task falling from six hours to twenty minutes. Those are real customers on selected tasks, which makes them a good reason to run the trial and a poor substitute for running it.

The gaps are worth naming too. IBM has not published a charge metric, an annual rate for the IBM i package, Enterprise pricing, or any statement that the Bobcoin allowance and the $0.50 overage rate are held for a subscription term. IBM's own announcement page for the Premium Package for i carries no pricing at all. None of that is a reason to avoid the product. It is a reason to get the terms in the quote rather than off a web page.

Go deeper

IBM Bob pricing, the full table ... published plan prices, the Premium Package figure, Bobcoin allowances and overage rates, and a break-even table against your own developer hours.
IBM Bob in our AI tools directory ... the product listing, capabilities and where it sits against other assistants for RPG.
What IBM Bob is and what it does ... the background piece, including how Bob succeeded the watsonx Code Assistant for i preview.
Bob Premium Package for i ... the short definition.

IBM Bob Pricing and Packages: Which One an IBM i Shop Actually Needs