IBM Bob vs Refact.ai
IBM Bob
bob.ibm.comRefact.ai
refact.aiSide by side
| Figure | IBM Bob | Refact.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $10/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 3 |
| Spec score · AI Coding Assistants | 7.9 (#67) | 9.3 (#5) |
| Spec score · AI Code Generators | 7.6 (#47) | 8.8 (#16) |
| Coding agent | Yes | Yes |
| Chat assistance | Yes | Yes |
| Codebase indexing | Yes | Yes |
| Code completion | Yes | Refact.ai predicts code in real time and says its completion uses Qwen2.5-Coder and retrieval-augmented generation. |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Supported IDEs | IBM Bob IDE | VS Code,JetBrains,Visual Studio,Neovim,Sublime Text |
| Terminal access | Yes | Yes |
Plans
IBM Bob
- TrialPrice not published
- Pro$20 a month
- Pro+$60 a month
- Ultra$200 a month
- Java Modernization$20 a month
- IBM i$40 a month
- IBM ZPrice not published
In their own words
Refact.ai
Refact.ai is a free, open-source autonomous AI coding agent for software development. It provides real-time code completion, in-IDE chat and agent workflows that can plan, execute and deploy coding tasks while letting users preview and control the process. Chat supports natural-language questions, editing, debugging and code generation. Repository analysis, retrieval-augmented generation and codebase indexing provide project-aware context, and terminal access is available. The maker says it supports more than 25 programming languages. Plugins are listed for VS Code and JetBrains, with Visual Studio, Neovim and Sublime Text marked beta. Platforms include Windows, macOS, Linux, API, extension and self-hosted deployment. Local use can connect to configured providers or runtimes such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama, LM Studio and vLLM. The Free plan costs nothing for personal and hobby projects. Pro costs $10 a month for professional use. Hosted accounts and cloud features are being retired.