IBM Bob vs. Plandex

Feature	IBM Bob	Plandex

Tagline	Your AI SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) partner from IBM	Open source AI coding agent for large projects and real world tasks
Website	https://bob.ibm.com	https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex
Language	javascript	go
Release Date	September 2, 2025	March 14, 2024
Last Updated	May 20, 2026	June 11, 2026
Provider Type	AI Lab	Independent
MCP Support	Yes	No
Multi-Agent Support	Yes	No
Git Integration	deep	deep
Multi-File Editing	Yes	No
Auto Test Running	Yes	Yes
Sandbox / Permissions	Yes	Yes
Image / Multimodal Input	Yes	No
Voice Mode	No	No
IDE Integration	Bob IDE	None - terminal only
Hooks / Extensions	Yes	No
Web Search	Yes	No
Local Model Support	No	Yes
Context Window	Model-dependent	2M tokens effective
Supported Models	Multi-provider (IBM-managed)	Any OpenAI-compatible models and 400+ models from OpenRouter.
Pricing Model	Freemium	Free
Free Tier	Yes	Yes
Price Range	Free / $20-200/mo	Free (self-hosted)
Source Code Availability	Proprietary Software	Open Source (MIT)
Source Code	https://github.com/IBM/ibm-bob	https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex
Development State	active	inactive