IBM

Qubit counts as the company reports them. Our rankings use QubitBenchmark's checked results instead.

• Disputed IBM and partners (Algorithmiq, Qedma, University of Chicago) report quantum advantage experiments on Heron processors Source
• Announced Nighthawk r2 runs 25 times faster than the Heron fleet and handles circuits of more than 7,500 gates Source
• Announced Loon demonstrates all key processor components for fault tolerance; qLDPC decoding in under 480 ns Source

• Four more teams enter Quantum Benchmarking Initiative final stage (QBI Stage C), DARPA (US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) (2026-10-07). An authoritative government selection, but it assesses plans and their feasibility, not measured performance, and the October 2026 announcement says nothing about the other seven Stage B companies.
• Evaluating the performance of QEC primitives on quantum processors at large width and depth, Jülich Supercomputing Centre authors (J. A. Montanez-Barrera, Kristel Michielsen); arXiv preprint (2026-10-05). Very recent preprint, not yet peer reviewed; the per-device numbers were read from a trade-press summary, not from the paper itself.
• The Quantum Index Report 2026: Quantum Processor Benchmarking (chapter 10), MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (with Accenture) (2026-10). Broad and well-sourced overview, but it compiles vendor-reported numbers rather than measuring them, and it says no independently verified universal metric exists.
• The Quantum Index Report 2026, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (MIT Sloan), in collaboration with Accenture (2026-10). Transparent, sourced and openly licensed data, but it measures activity (patents, funding, press releases) rather than how well the machines perform.
• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Quantum Computing 2026 Vendor Assessment (IDC #US54125526), IDC (International Data Corporation); analyst Heather West, PhD (2026-06). Analyst judgement of commercial maturity and strategy, not of measured machine performance, and the full placement chart is behind a paywall. Our view of it comes from vendor-licensed excerpts and press releases.
• Metriq: A Collaborative Platform for Benchmarking Quantum Computers (Metriq Score scoreboard), Unitary Foundation (2026-03-09). Open, reproducible method run by a non-profit, but it covers only about a dozen cloud machines, a missing benchmark scores zero, the composite depends on the chosen baseline, and IBM both funds the work and tops the table.
• Comparative Analysis of Contemporary Quantum Computer Processors: Architectures, Performance, and Perspectives, IEEE Access (authors: M. Vukšić, J. Ćelić, A. Cuculić, University of Rijeka) (2026-03-05). Peer-reviewed, but the paper itself says Table 1 is 'a high-level comparative snapshot rather than a definitive ranking'. Its data is already dated, and some milestone dates should be checked against primary sources.
• Quantum Advantage Tracker, Community effort launched by IBM with Algorithmiq, Flatiron Institute and BlueQubit (15+ contributing organisations) (2026-02-23). Useful for showing which advantage claims survive classical challenge, but it is vendor-initiated, does not rank machines, and IBM's own blog reports a featured candidate later beaten by new classical methods.
• CB Insights ESP matrices: Quantum computer makers (neutral atoms, photonics, silicon qubit, superconducting circuits, trapped ions), CB Insights (2026). Based on market and business signals, not machine performance. Vendors can brief CB Insights, and most placements are hidden behind a subscription.
• Quantum Benchmarking Initiative: Stage B Selection, DARPA (US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) (2025-11-06). An official list of who advanced, not a ranking; it partly rests on plans and roadmaps, and Stage C has since narrowed it (see darpa-qbi-stage-c-2026).
• Evaluating the performance of quantum processing units at large width and depth, Jülich Supercomputing Centre (Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Purdue University; arXiv preprint (2025-05-28). Careful, independent academic study using one workload; it is a 2025 snapshot that predates newer machines, and the access budgets differed by vendor.