Qiskit Quantum Backend Selector

Noise- and queue-aware backend selection and routing for IBM Quantum backends, built on qiskit-ibm-runtime.

QiskitRuntimeService.least_busy() only looks at queue depth. This package scores candidate backends per-circuit — factoring in whether the circuit actually fits, and (optionally) an estimate of expected fidelity after transpilation — then can route job submission with automatic failover if a backend errors out.

Install

pip install qiskit-quantum-backend-selector

Or from source:

pip install -e .

Quick start

from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
from qiskit_ibm_runtime import QiskitRuntimeService
from qiskit_backend_selector import BackendSelector, HybridScoring

service = QiskitRuntimeService()
selector = BackendSelector(service=service, strategy=HybridScoring())

qc = QuantumCircuit(2, 2)
qc.h(0)
qc.cx(0, 1)
qc.measure([0, 1], [0, 1])

best_backend = selector.select(qc)

With automatic failover on submission errors:

from qiskit_ibm_runtime import SamplerV2 as Sampler
from qiskit_backend_selector import BackendRouter

router = BackendRouter(selector, max_attempts=3)

def submit(backend, circuit):
    sampler = Sampler(mode=backend)
    return sampler.run([circuit])

job = router.submit(qc, submit)

Scoring strategies

• QueueOnlyScoring — ranks by reported pending-job count. Cheap, equivalent in spirit to least_busy().
• NoiseAwareScoring — transpiles the circuit against each candidate backend's real coupling map and basis gates, then estimates fidelity by multiplying per-gate and per-readout error rates from backend.properties() along the transpiled circuit.
• HybridScoring — weighted sum of the two above (queue_weight, noise_weight, defaults 0.4/0.6).

Any strategy that implements score(backend, circuit) -> float | None can be dropped in; returning None excludes a backend (e.g. it doesn't have enough qubits for the circuit).

QueueOnlyScoring, NoiseAwareScoring, and HybridScoring all accept an optional CalibrationCache (see monitor.py) to avoid refetching backend.status()/backend.properties() on every call when scoring many circuits in a short window:

from qiskit_backend_selector import HybridScoring, CalibrationCache

queue_cache = CalibrationCache(ttl_seconds=30)     # queue depth changes fast
noise_cache = CalibrationCache(ttl_seconds=3600)   # calibration data doesn't
strategy = HybridScoring(queue_cache=queue_cache, noise_cache=noise_cache)

Live smoke test

scripts/live_smoke_test.py exercises this against a real QiskitRuntimeService — real auth, real calibration data, an actual job submission — none of which the fake-backend test suite covers. Run it manually with your own IBM Quantum credentials configured:

python scripts/live_smoke_test.py

This has been run twice against a live service (2026-09-03). First run caught a real bug (non-ISA circuit submission — see below, fixed in router.py); second run, after the fix, submitted cleanly to ibm_fez and returned a real RuntimeJobV2. Re-run after any further change to router.py or scoring.py.

Fidelity estimate: validation status

scripts/validate_fidelity_estimate.py checks NoiseAwareScoring's analytic prediction against a Qiskit Aer noise-model simulation built from the same calibration data (AerSimulator.from_backend). Sample results:

Agreement is within ~0.02 across these cases, and tests/test_fidelity_validation.py regression-tests this stays under a 0.05 tolerance (skipped automatically if the optional qiskit-aer extra isn't installed: pip install -e ".[validate]").

Read this narrowly. Aer's noise model is built from the same calibration numbers NoiseAwareScoring reads, using thermal-relaxation and depolarizing channels per gate — which are themselves built from independence assumptions similar to the analytic estimate's. Close agreement here shows the analytic math is a reasonable approximation of that noise model, not that the noise model matches a real device on any given day. It does not touch crosstalk, calibration drift, or correlated errors — the gap flagged below still stands until validated against an actual hardware run.

Known limitations

• Independent-error assumption. NoiseAwareScoring multiplies gate and readout error rates as if they were independent. Checked against Aer noise-model simulation (see above) it tracks within ~0.02 — but that simulation shares the same independence assumptions, so this doesn't rule out systematic overstatement on real hardware, where crosstalk, drift, and spatially correlated errors aren't Markovian per-gate channels. Treat it as a relative ranking signal until checked against real device results.
• Transpile cost. Noise-aware scoring transpiles the circuit against every candidate backend on every call. CalibrationCache (now wired in) avoids refetching status()/properties(), but transpilation itself isn't cached — for large batches of circuits against many backends this still gets expensive.
• Queue score ignores job cost. QueueOnlyScoring counts pending jobs, not their size or expected runtime, so it can't tell a queue of five quick jobs from a queue of five expensive ones.
• Hybrid weights are defaults, not tuned. The 0.4/0.6 split in HybridScoring is a reasonable starting point, not the result of empirical calibration against real turnaround-time or fidelity data.
• No live-service integration tests in CI. scripts/live_smoke_test.py has been run manually twice: once caught a real bug (non-ISA circuit submission, fixed — see above), once confirmed the fix works end-to-end against real hardware (ibm_fez, job daciemu42tqs73as7h10). It still isn't run automatically, so nothing currently prevents a future regression from reaching a release without someone running it manually. BackendRouter's failover path itself is still verified only against injected submit_fns in pytest, not real Runtime error modes like auth failures, rate limits, or mid-job backend retirement.
• Static circuit assumption. Scoring assumes a fixed circuit width known ahead of time. Dynamic circuits with mid-circuit measurement and classical feedforward are transpiled and scored the same way, but the fidelity estimate doesn't account for any additional overhead specific to dynamic execution.

License

Apache-2.0