IBM i Software Pricing FAQ

IBM i software is licensed by per-core performance tier: P05 (entry), P10 (small business), P20 Standard Edition, P30 Enterprise Edition, P40 (retired), and P50 (enterprise, priced the same as P30). The tier -- not raw core count -- is what drives IBM i software pricing. See our full IBM i Tier Economics breakdown for real dollar figures at each tier.

P05 and P10 have been subscription-only for new purchases and license transfers since May 7, 2024 -- no new perpetual licenses are sold at those tiers. P20 and P30 are offered as bundled subscription editions (Standard and Enterprise), though perpetual OTC pricing for those tiers is still referenced in IBM's announcement letters. Existing perpetual licenses at any tier remain valid under SWMA.

You lose current-release entitlement and technical support. To reinstate coverage, IBM charges an After License Fee (ALF) that runs roughly 2 to 3 times the annual SWMA rate -- not prorated for how long the lapse lasted. A lapsed P10 SWMA contract, for example, can cost roughly $10,500 to reinstate. Letting SWMA lapse to save money almost never pays off once reinstatement is priced in.

IBM does not publish a full price list. The most concrete public data points: a base license starting around $4,495, SMB implementation typically $5,000-$20,000, and enterprise implementations $50,000 or more depending on customization, data migration, and training. Metered cloud capacity runs $0.336-$0.528 per instance-hour for burst or temporary DR use.

The main third-party logical replication vendors are Maxava (Maxava HA / Maxava Cloud), Rocket iCluster, and the legacy iTera/Vision Solutions/MIMIX lineage. None of these publish list pricing -- Maxava, for example, licenses by the source machine's software tier (P-group) rather than a fixed rate. Budget for a quote against your specific configuration rather than assuming a published number.

Published enterprise IBM i RPG/COBOL modernization benchmarks range from roughly $5 million to $20 million or more over 12-24 months for large scopes, with smaller cross-industry modernization efforts reported in the $2.2-4 million range with a 12-24 month breakeven. Scoping to the roughly 70% of the codebase that actually delivers business value, rather than rewriting everything, is the single biggest cost lever.

It depends on your current maintenance spend and how much custom business logic you'd need to replace. A commonly cited rule of thumb: migration typically only pays for itself when current annual maintenance and support costs already exceed roughly $300,000/year. Below that, the migration project cost and business disruption usually outweigh the savings -- and most AS/400 shops run customized logic that a generic ERP can't match without expensive gap-fit work.

Starting July 15, 2025, IBM began bundling additional software entitlements into the P20 and P30 subscription tiers for a modest premium over the standalone IBM i-only subscription: $16,000/core/year for P20 (vs. $14,500 unbundled) and $24,500/core/year for P30 (vs. $21,900 unbundled). IBM claims the bundled entitlements are worth over $19,000/core/year at P20 and over $52,000/core/year at P30.

It's a ratio of IBM's own claimed bundle value divided by the price you pay, normalized to a 0-100 scale against the highest ratio observed. It's built by AS/400 Software Pricing, not IBM, and only scores tiers where IBM has published both a bundle price and a claimed value figure (currently P20, P30, and P50). See the Software Value Index page for the full scoring table and methodology.

It varies by tier: roughly 50+ users at P05 and roughly 200+ users at P10, based on IT Jungle's published crossover analysis. P20 and P30 don't have per-user fees at all, so the comparison doesn't apply at those tiers.

It depends heavily on scope. PowerHA implementations alone run $5,000-$20,000 for SMB and $50,000+ for enterprise. For a broader ERP-scale implementation on any platform, industry data shows SMB implementations starting around $20,000, enterprise implementations exceeding $100,000, and multi-business-unit global rollouts reaching $2-5 million or more. Implementation labor (not software licensing) is typically 50-70% of that first-year total.

SWMA is the ongoing annual maintenance fee that keeps a perpetual license entitled to support and upgrades. ALF is the one-time penalty charged to reinstate SWMA after it has lapsed -- typically 2-3 times the annual SWMA rate, not prorated for the lapse period. Example: a $1,500/year SWMA contract can cost roughly $3,000 to reinstate after a lapse; a $3,500/year contract roughly $7,000.

IBM publishes Bob's plan prices: $20 per month for Pro, $60 for Pro+ and $200 for Ultra, with a free 30-day trial. The IBM i piece is a $40 per month premium package attached to whichever plan you choose, so the working figure for an IBM i developer seat is $60 per month at Pro, $100 at Pro+ and $240 at Ultra. IBM notes that its published prices are indicative, vary by country, and exclude taxes and duties. Enterprise plan pricing is quote-only. Figures read from IBM's Bob pricing page on September 2, 2026. See our full IBM Bob pricing breakdown for the Bobcoin consumption model that sits underneath the subscription.

$40 per month, added on top of a Pro, Pro+ or Ultra plan. There is no standalone "Bob for IBM i" subscription. The package is what connects Bob to a live IBM i instead of source code copied to a workstation: about 40 IBM i skills and workflows, about 30 IBM i tools that read and write QSYS and the IFS, run CL commands and SQL, launch a 5250 session and manage library lists, plus a Developer Mode for RPG, COBOL, DDS and CL work and a Db2 for i Database Mode for query analysis and optimization. IBM's own announcement page for the package carries no pricing; the $40 figure comes from IBM's Bob pricing page.

Bobcoins are IBM's consumption metric for Bob, and yes, they can change the bill materially. Every action Bob takes consumes Bobcoins in proportion to the compute involved, so explaining a 90,000-line RPG program is not the same load as generating a display file. Each plan includes a monthly allowance that resets and does not roll over: 50 Bobcoins on Trial and Pro, 180 on Pro+, 1,000 on Ultra. Past the allowance, pay-as-you-go overage runs $0.50 per Bobcoin. That rate is what makes the plan choice arithmetic rather than a guess: Ultra costs $180 per month more than Pro and includes 950 more Bobcoins, which would cost $475 at the overage rate. IBM does not publish typical consumption for IBM i tasks, so run the free trial against your own worst legacy program before committing a team.

IBM has not published a charge metric. The Bob pricing page shows a monthly figure for each plan with no stated user, seat or authorized-user unit, and the July 2026 launch coverage does not state one either. That matters because a $60 monthly seat and a $60 monthly subscription for a five-developer team are very different budget lines. Ask for the charge metric explicitly in the quote, along with whether an annual or multi-year term exists and what it does to the rate, since no annual list price is published for the Premium Package for i either.