IBM Bob vs. Pi

Feature	IBM Bob	Pi

Tagline	Your AI SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) partner from IBM	A minimal terminal coding harness
Website	https://bob.ibm.com	https://pi.dev
Language	javascript	typescript
Release Date	September 2, 2025	December 2, 2025
Last Updated	May 20, 2026	April 28, 2026
Provider Type	AI Lab	Independent
MCP Support	Yes	No
Multi-Agent Support	Yes	Yes
Git Integration	deep	deep
Multi-File Editing	Yes	Yes
Auto Test Running	Yes	Yes
Sandbox / Permissions	Yes	Yes
Image / Multimodal Input	Yes	Yes
Voice Mode	No	No
IDE Integration	Bob IDE	None - terminal only
Hooks / Extensions	Yes	Yes
Web Search	Yes	Yes
Local Model Support	No	Yes
Context Window	Model-dependent	Model-dependent; auto-compaction
Supported Models	Multi-provider (IBM-managed)	20+ providers: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, OpenRouter, Groq, Ollama, xAI, Azure, Bedrock
Pricing Model	Freemium	BYOK
Free Tier	Yes	Yes
Price Range	Free / $20-200/mo	Free (BYOK)
Source Code Availability	Proprietary Software	Open Source (MIT)
Source Code	https://github.com/IBM/ibm-bob	https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono
Development State	active	active