Techniques for using stark tone pulses to mitigate cross-resonance collision in qubits are presented. A tone management component can control application of pulses to qubits by a tone generator component to mitigate undesirable frequency collisions between qubits. The tone generator component (TGC) can apply an off-resonant tone pulse to a qubit during a gate to induce a stark shift. TGC can apply a cross-resonance tone pulse to a control qubit at a frequency associated with the qubit, wherein the frequency can be stark shifted based on the off-resonant tone pulse. The qubit can be a target qubit, the control qubit itself, or a spectator qubit that can be coupled to the target qubit or the control qubit. The gate can be a cross-resonance gate, a two-qubit gate, or a measurement gate that can utilize an echo sequence, a target rotary, or active cancellation.