Amazon Q Developer
AWS's sunsetting AI coding assistant — Kiro is the successor
Overview
AWS's AI coding assistant (formerly CodeWhisperer), now sunsetting: new signups closed May 15, 2026 and IDE plugins/subscriptions reach end of support on April 30, 2027. Kiro, AWS's spec-driven agent IDE, is the designated successor.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 3 Sep 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- 50 agentic requests/month
- IDE and CLI access
- Latest available Claude models
- Higher agentic request limits
- Java/.NET transforms (4,000 LOC/mo)
- IAM Identity Center + admin dashboards
- IP indemnity
Use cases
What you can produce with Amazon Q Developer
- IAM policy, CloudFormation, CDK and Lambda code written with awareness of your own AWS account's resources
- Security scans across a repository, with remediation suggestions inline
- A Java 8 or .NET modernisation run by the transformation agent, up to 4,000 lines a month on Pro
- Console and CloudWatch troubleshooting answered without leaving the IDE
- Reference tracking that flags completions resembling open-source training data, along with the licence
- 50 agentic requests a month on the free individual tier, no credit card required
- None of it after 30 April 2027, when the IDE plugins and paid subscriptions shut down — new signups closed on 15 May 2026, and Kiro is the successor
Amazon Q Developer is on the clock: AWS closed new signups on May 15, 2026 and ends support for the IDE plugins and paid subscriptions on April 30, 2027, steering everyone toward Kiro, its spec-driven successor. Until then it remains a competent assistant for teams living inside AWS — code completion, multi-file agent tasks, security scanning, and Java/.NET transforms with IAM and CloudWatch context that generic copilots lack. The free tier (50 agentic requests a month) and $19 Pro seat still work for existing users, but Opus 4.6 and newer coding models were pulled from Q Developer Pro in May 2026 and reserved for Kiro, so the capability gap only widens from here. Existing AWS shops should plan the Kiro migration now rather than ride out the deprecation window; nobody new should adopt it.
What people say
April 30, 2027 is the date every Q Developer shop should have circled. AWS announced end of support in April 2026: new signups closed on May 15, Claude Opus 4.6 and newer coding models came off Q Developer Pro on May 29 — they are now exclusive to Kiro, the spec-driven successor — and the IDE plugins and paid subscriptions shut down entirely in April 2027. The CodeWhisperer name went first, renamed to Amazon Q Developer back in April 2024; by mid-2026 the old brand survives only in legacy blog posts and half-updated comparison articles.
Completions and agent tasks understand IAM policies, CloudWatch, CloudFormation, CDK and SDK calls in ways generic copilots fumble, the security scanning is solid, and the Java and .NET transformation agent — up to 4,000 lines a month on Pro — has real fans among teams dragging Java 8 estates forward. It kept CodeWhisperer's free individual tier with no credit card required and its reference tracking against open-source training data; the free tier still includes 50 agentic requests a month, and existing Pro subscribers keep their $19 seats through the sunset, with IP indemnity, an admin dashboard and pooled transformation quotas on top.
On AWS-specific work — infrastructure-as-code, Lambda, console troubleshooting — users rated it above Copilot. On general-purpose coding it trailed Copilot, Cursor and Claude Code in most head-to-heads, with reviewers reporting generic suggestions and slower completions on larger codebases the moment they stepped outside an AWS-centric stack, and the model removals widen that gap monthly. Its agentic mode has posted competitive SWE-Bench numbers, but competitive on a benchmark and pleasant to use daily are not the same claim.
Kiro offers a config auto-copy for CLI users and a near-identical Code OSS environment for VS Code users; JetBrains users get a rougher path via ACP. Kiro's pricing runs from a free tier of 50 requests through a $19 Pro to a $200 Power tier, so budget parity is roughly there. There is no scenario in which a new team should start on Q Developer in mid-2026.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
Frequently asked questions
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Amazon Q Developer's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Amazon Q Developer unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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