Amazon Q Developer / Kiro

Overview

Amazon Q Developer is AWS's AI coding assistant. AWS published an end-of-support announcement on April 30, 2026: Q Developer's IDE plugins and paid subscriptions reach full end of support on April 30, 2027, and new signups were blocked from May 15, 2026. The successor is Kiro, AWS's spec-driven agentic IDE. Q Developer inside the AWS Management Console, the AWS documentation site, the Console Mobile App, and the Slack / Microsoft Teams chat apps is not affected and continues as before.

The successor: Kiro

Spec-driven development

Turns a natural-language request into a written spec, decomposes it into tasks, and only then implements — as an alternative to the "vibe" mode that writes code straight away.

Surfaces

Kiro ships as a VS Code (Code OSS) based IDE plus a CLI and a browser-based Kiro Web. It supports MCP natively, and event-triggered agent hooks automate tests, documentation, and security scans.

Models

Kiro runs Claude through Amazon Bedrock. Claude Opus 5 was added to the model picker on July 24, 2026, and Claude Sonnet 5 is available with a full 1M-token context window. The latest coding models are exclusive to Kiro — the top-tier models were removed from Q Developer Pro on May 29, 2026.

Modernization

Automates major version upgrades such as Java migrations. AWS Transform's continuous modernization has AI agents scan repositories on an ongoing basis to surface technical debt.

Security scanning

Automatically scans generated code for vulnerabilities and proposes fixes.

Pricing

Billing moved from Q Developer Pro ($19/user/month) to Kiro's credit system. A credit is a unit of agent work, and burn rate varies by model and mode — spec-mode requests cost 5x vibe mode, and Claude Opus 5 carries a 2.20x multiplier.

Plan	Monthly	Included credits
Free	$0	50
Pro	$20	1,000
Pro+	$40	More than Pro
Pro Max	$100	Higher still
Power	$200	Largest allowance
Enterprise	Contact	Centralized billing, usage reporting

Overage is billed at $0.04/credit. Enterprise adds SAML/SCIM SSO through AWS IAM Identity Center plus organizational management.

Typical Uses

• Accelerating AWS projects with IAM and CloudFormation context
• Upgrading legacy Java codebases
• Team development that pins down a spec before implementation
• Code generation with built-in security scanning
• Opening PRs against a GitHub repo from the browser via Kiro Web

Strengths

• ✅ AWS-native — strong on IAM and CloudFormation
• ✅ Spec-driven workflow separates spec, tasks, and implementation
• ✅ Claude Opus 5 / Sonnet 5 selectable via Bedrock
• ✅ Code transformation and modernization
• ✅ Native MCP support and agent hooks
• ✅ Free tier (50 credits/month)

Weaknesses

• ❌ Q Developer's IDE plugins hit end of support on April 30, 2027 — new adopters should plan on Kiro
• ❌ Limited value outside AWS
• ❌ Credit burn swings widely by model and mode, making cost hard to forecast
• ❌ Q Developer vs Kiro positioning confuses users
• ❌ Limited Japanese docs

Official Resources

• Kiro: https://kiro.dev
• Amazon Q Developer: https://aws.amazon.com/q/developer
• End-of-support announcement: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/amazon-q-developer-end-of-support-announcement/