Qiskit

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

7748 stars · 3019 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Qiskit is an open-source SDK for programming quantum computers at the level of quantum circuits, operators, and primitives (Sampler and Estimator). It includes a high-performance transpiler for circuit optimization, a quantum information toolbox, and exposes both Python and C APIs backed by a Rust core.

Use cases

• build and simulate quantum circuits in Python
• transpile and optimize quantum circuits for real hardware
• run quantum algorithms like QAOA and VQE on IBM Quantum backends
• simulate quantum chemistry Hamiltonians and molecular ground states
• implement quantum machine learning with quantum kernels
• write quantum computing research code and experiments
• extend Qiskit via C API or Rust internals

When to choose

• you want the most widely adopted, actively maintained quantum SDK
• you need fast transpilation and circuit optimization for utility-scale workloads
• you plan to run circuits on IBM Quantum hardware or simulators
• you need a rich ecosystem of addons for chemistry, optimization, and error mitigation

When to avoid

• you need a non-Python-first workflow without building from source for the C library
• you only want circuit visualization without any execution or simulation
• you target non-IBM quantum hardware with incompatible toolchains without checking provider plugins

Facets

library · maturity stable

sdk compiler simulation machine-learning math quantum-computing chemistry python rust c cross-platform quantum-computing quantum-circuits transpiler quantum-sdk ibm-quantum quantum-algorithms sampler estimator quantum-information quantum-programming research physics algorithms

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="Qiskit/qiskit")