Amazon Q Developer vs Kiro: pricing, the real difference, and what to migrate to before support ends
Jul 25, 2026 · 9 min read · By Marcus Lee, Engineering
Amazon Q Developer and Kiro are not the same product, and the comparison is really a migration decision. AWS blocked new Amazon Q Developer signups on May 15, 2026 and its IDE plugins and paid Pro subscriptions reach end of support on April 30, 2027, with the Java and .NET code transformation features retiring alongside them. Kiro is the replacement AWS points you at: a standalone agentic IDE built on Code OSS, plus a CLI and a web interface, organized around spec-driven development. The biggest practical difference is billing. Q Developer Pro was a mostly-flat $19 per user per month. Kiro is credit-metered, from $20 a month for 1,000 credits with extra credits at $0.04 each, so your bill now moves with how hard the agent works.
If you already run Q Developer, you have until April 30, 2027, which sounds comfortable and usually is not. The transformation features are the piece teams underestimate: if a Java upgrade or .NET port is on your roadmap for 2027, the tooling you planned to use will not be there. Below is what actually differs, what each option costs, and the honest cases for and against following AWS to Kiro.
Is Amazon Q Developer discontinued?
Partly, and the nuance matters. AWS published an end-of-support announcement covering the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins for VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse and Visual Studio, and the paid Q Developer Pro subscriptions. Those reach end of support on April 30, 2027. New Free Tier signups and new subscription creation were already blocked on May 15, 2026, and access to the Opus 4.6 model through Q Developer ended on May 29, 2026.
What is not going away: Amazon Q Developer inside the AWS Management Console and other first-party AWS surfaces, the Slack and Microsoft Teams chat integrations, and Amazon Q Business, which is a separate enterprise-search product with its own pricing. So "Amazon Q is dead" overstates it. The IDE coding assistant is the part being retired, which happens to be the part most developers meant when they said Amazon Q Developer.
One consequence worth stating plainly: if you did not have a subscription before May 15, 2026, you cannot buy Q Developer at any price. Every article still quoting $19 per user as a live option is misleading for new buyers. The full tier breakdown and the retirement timeline are on our Amazon Q Developer pricing page.
Is Amazon Q Developer the same as Kiro?
No. They are different products with different shapes, and Kiro is not a rename. Q Developer was primarily a plugin: it lived inside the IDE you already used, added inline completions, chat, agentic tasks and code transformation, and inherited AWS identity through IAM Identity Center. You did not change editors to adopt it.
Kiro is a standalone agentic IDE based on Code OSS, shipped alongside a CLI and a web interface with cloud sandboxes. It accepts VS Code settings and themes, which softens the switch, but it is still a separate editor you install rather than an extension for the one you have. Its organizing idea is spec-driven development: instead of answering one-off prompts, it turns a prompt into requirements, an architectural design and a sequenced task list that you approve before code gets written. It adds steering files for persistent context, automated hooks, parallel subagents, property-based testing, and MCP support, and it connects to both GitHub and GitLab repositories.
That is a genuinely different working model, not a version bump. If what you valued about Q Developer was that it quietly improved the IDE you already had, Kiro asks for more adjustment than the word "replacement" suggests.
What is the difference between Amazon Q Developer and Kiro?
| Dimension | Amazon Q Developer | Kiro |
|---|---|---|
| Product shape | IDE plugin (VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse, Visual Studio) plus CLI | Standalone IDE on Code OSS, plus CLI and web interface |
| Available to new customers | No, signups blocked May 15, 2026 | Yes |
| Supported until | April 30, 2027 for plugins and paid Pro | Actively developed |
| Billing model | $19/user/mo Pro seat, transformations metered at $0.003 per line | Credit-metered, from $20/mo for 1,000 credits, $0.04 per extra credit |
| Core workflow | Completions, chat and agentic tasks in your existing editor | Spec-driven: requirements, design and tasks approved before code |
| Legacy modernization | Java upgrades and .NET porting, retiring with the plugins | Not the focus; AWS points to AWS Transform instead |
| Git hosts | GitHub-centric; GitLab via Duo with Amazon Q on self-managed Ultimate | GitHub and GitLab |
| Switching cost | None, it was an extension | Real: a new editor and a new planning workflow |
Amazon Q Developer vs Kiro pricing: what each one costs
Q Developer Pro was $19 per user per month, with 4,000 lines of code of transformations a month per user pooled at the AWS payer-account level and overage at $0.003 per line. For teams that only wrote and reviewed code, the $19 was effectively the whole bill, which made it one of the cheapest capable seats in the category.
Kiro's tiers are credit-based: Free gives 50 credits a month, Pro is $20 for 1,000 credits, Pro+ is $40 for 2,000, Pro Max is $100 for 5,000, and Power is $200 for 10,000. Extra credits cost $0.04 each, and team tiers match those per-user prices while billing overage as pay-per-use at the same $0.04 per credit, with consolidated billing, usage analytics and SSO.
The headline numbers look similar, $19 against $20, and that similarity is the trap. A credit allowance is not a seat. On a flat seat, a developer who leans hard on the agent for a week costs the same as one who barely opens it. On a credit plan, that same heavy week draws down the balance and the difference lands on the invoice. Agentic work burns budget much faster than chat does, because a single task can involve many model calls across planning, editing and testing.
So the useful exercise before you migrate is not comparing sticker prices, it is estimating a busy month for your heaviest user and pricing that. If the answer is uncomfortable, look at the tiers above it, because moving from Pro to Pro Max is a five-fold price jump. We keep a running comparison of flat versus credit-metered AI coding tool pricing across every major tool, and metering is now the category norm rather than the exception.
Do I have to migrate to Kiro?
No. Kiro is AWS's recommended path, not a requirement, and the deadline is the only forcing function. You have three realistic options.
Follow AWS to Kiro. This makes the most sense if your work is AWS-native, you liked Q Developer's AWS integration, and the spec-driven model appeals to how your team plans work. You accept a new editor and a usage meter in exchange for staying inside the AWS ecosystem, with a first-party migration path and shared administration.
Move transformation work to AWS Transform. If the reason you bought Q Developer was Java upgrades or .NET porting, that capability does not move to Kiro. AWS points you to AWS Transform custom and AWS Transform full-stack Windows modernization. Treat this as a separate procurement decision from your everyday coding assistant, because it is one.
Leave the AWS tooling track. If Q Developer was just "the cheap assistant our AWS bill already covered", a forced migration is a reasonable moment to ask what you actually want. The category has moved: most tools now offer an agent that can take a task and produce a pull request, and they differ mainly in billing shape and how much supervision they need. Our Amazon Q Developer alternative comparison covers the options feature by feature.
Whichever you choose, do not let it drift to 2027. If your team is at a regulated US company, swapping an approved vendor mid-cycle also means updating the vendor register your SOC 2 or ISO 27001 evidence depends on, and that paperwork moves slower than the engineering decision does.
Amazon Q Developer vs Kiro CLI
Both ship a command-line tool, and for a lot of developers the CLI was the best part of Q Developer: it worked in a terminal, it did not care which editor you used, and it scripted cleanly. Kiro's CLI carries context across its IDE, CLI and web interfaces through steering files and learnings, and it works with a very wide range of existing command-line tools.
The important caveat is billing, not capability. A CLI makes it easy to run the agent in a loop or wire it into automation, which is exactly the usage pattern that consumes credits fastest. If your plan is to script Kiro across many repositories or run it in CI, model the credit draw first. Flat-priced tools behave more predictably under that kind of automated use, which is worth weighing if scripted agent runs are central to how you work.
Which should you pick?
| Your situation | Best move |
|---|---|
| Deeply AWS-native, and the spec-driven model fits your planning | Kiro. First-party path, strongest AWS alignment. |
| You bought Q Developer for Java or .NET modernization | AWS Transform. That capability is not in Kiro. |
| You want to keep your current editor | Not Kiro. It is a separate IDE, not an extension. |
| You need a predictable monthly bill | A flat-priced tool. Kiro's credits move with usage. |
| You want an agent that opens a reviewed PR on GitHub or GitLab | An async PR agent. Both Kiro and Agentcode reach both hosts. |
| You plan to script agent runs across many repos or in CI | Flat pricing. Automated use is what drains credit balances. |
There is no single right answer, and the AWS-sanctioned path is a perfectly sensible default if you live in AWS. What we would push back on is treating the migration as a formality because the prices look alike. Q Developer's $19 seat and Kiro's $20 tier are different products priced on different mechanics, and teams that skip that comparison tend to discover it on an invoice.
Where a flat-priced PR agent fits
For completeness, and with the obvious disclosure that this is our product: Agentcode is a flat subscription from $29 a month with no credit meter and no usage pool. You connect a GitHub or GitLab repository you already have, describe a task, and the agent plans it, edits the code, runs your existing test suite, and opens a reviewable pull request. It never merges on its own and never trains on your code. A busy month costs the same as a quiet one, which is the specific thing a credit plan cannot promise.
It is not the right tool for everything. If your work is deeply AWS-native, Kiro's integration and spec-driven planning will fit better. If you have a large Java modernization ahead, AWS Transform is purpose-built for it and we are not. What Agentcode is good at is the narrow, common job of handing off a bounded task and getting back a tested pull request on a bill you can forecast. If you are re-evaluating anyway because of the sunset, that is a reasonable thing to put on the shortlist. Our AI coding agent page covers how the workflow actually runs.