IBM Bob
IBM's generally available AI coding agent for IBM i, sold as a monthly subscription: $20 per month for Pro, $60 for Pro+ and $200 for Ultra, with a separate $40 per month Premium Package for i required to work against a live system.
Bob is an agentic development environment, a fork of Visual Studio Code, that IBM shipped for RPG and COBOL work on IBM i. It reached general availability in March 2026 and Bob 2.0 shipped June 24, 2026 with a 270,000-token context window, parallel tool calling, subagents and task-level rollback. From a cost standpoint, the important thing is that Bob is metered as well as subscribed. Each plan includes a monthly allowance of Bobcoins, IBM's consumption unit, which resets monthly and does not roll over: 50 on Pro, 180 on Pro+, 1,000 on Ultra. Overage runs $0.50 per Bobcoin on individual plans. That makes the effective annual cost of a seat the subscription plus whatever the developer burns past the allowance, which IBM does not publish typical figures for. Bob belongs in a modernization project budget rather than the IBM i tier licensing conversation: a Pro seat with the Premium Package for i is $720 a year against a P20 Standard Edition subscription at $14,500 a year.
Related Context
- IBM Bob product listing : capabilities, vendor detail and how Bob compares to other AI coding assistants for RPG
- IBM Bob pricing page : IBM's own published plan prices and premium package figures
Related Terms
Bob Premium Package for i
The $40 per month IBM i add-on to an IBM Bob subscription, required for Bob to work directly against QSYS, the IFS and Db2 for i on a live system.
Subscription License
A recurring annual IBM i software license fee, now the only option for new P05/P10 purchases and the structure behind the P20/P30 bundle tiers.
TCO
Total Cost of Ownership, the full multi-year cost of a system or software stack including licensing, support, implementation, and operational cost.