Amazon Q Developer

Amazon Q Developer is AWS’s software-development assistant for writing, understanding, testing, reviewing, and troubleshooting code, with especially deep connections to AWS services and workflows. It remains useful for existing users, but its 2026 status matters: AWS plans to discontinue support for the Q Developer IDE plugins on April 30, 2027, and is directing developers toward Kiro for comparable IDE capabilities.

Amazon Q Developer Is More AWS Specialist Than General Coding Copilot

At its core, Amazon Q Developer helps developers work through the software development lifecycle rather than simply autocomplete the next line of code. AWS describes it as a conversational assistant that can help users understand, build, extend, and operate AWS applications. It can answer questions about AWS architecture and resources, explain code, generate code and tests, diagnose problems, and assist with refactoring and modernization.

That AWS orientation is the product’s clearest identity. A developer working with Lambda, IAM, networking, databases, infrastructure, or other AWS services can ask questions in the same development environment where the code is being written. The result is a tool that sits somewhere between an AI coding assistant and an AWS technical companion.

It is not limited to AWS-hosted applications. Q Developer supports ordinary software-development workflows in popular IDEs and through the command line, so it can be useful for general programming too. But its strongest reason to choose it has historically been the connection between application code and the AWS environment around that code

From Code Suggestions to Multi-Step Development Work

The older image of an AI coding assistant is a box that predicts the next few lines. Amazon Q Developer goes substantially further.

Its agentic coding experience can interpret a natural-language development request, inspect a workspace, plan changes, modify files, generate tests, and execute commands as part of a larger task. AWS says the experience can handle activities such as implementing features, documenting code, testing, reviewing, refactoring, and software upgrades.

That matters most when the requested change crosses several files or involves understanding an existing project. Instead of asking for one function at a time, a developer can describe the intended result and have Q work through a sequence of implementation steps.

Q Developer also has workspace-context capabilities. AWS says it can use broader project context to produce responses tailored to the structure of the workspace rather than relying solely on the currently open file. That makes it more useful for onboarding, repository questions, refactoring, and changes that depend on existing conventions.

There is still an important distinction between generating a plausible implementation and producing production-ready software. Developers need to review generated changes, run tests, check dependencies, and verify security-sensitive code. Agentic coding can reduce mechanical work, but it does not remove engineering responsibility.

Where the Tool Fits Into the AWS Developer Workflow

Amazon Q Developer is available across several development environments, including Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDEs, Visual Studio, and Eclipse, with feature availability varying by editor. AWS documentation lists chat, agentic coding, workspace context, inline suggestions, and other capabilities across supported IDEs.

The assistant can also work from the command line, although this part of the product has already moved toward Kiro. AWS now describes the Q CLI as having become the Kiro CLI, reflecting the broader transition underway.

Beyond ordinary coding, Q Developer can assist with security scanning, automated code review, test generation, and application transformations. AWS documentation describes vulnerability scanning and suggested remediations, while its code-review tooling can identify issues such as logical errors, anti-patterns, duplication, and security problems.

There are also AWS-specific workflows around resources and operations. In the AWS console, Q Developer can answer questions and help diagnose common errors. Those first-party AWS experiences are important because they are not part of the same sunset as the IDE plugins. AWS explicitly says its Management Console and other listed first-party AWS experiences are continuing. 

The 2026 Catch: AWS Is Moving Developers to Kiro

This is the most important part of the current review.

AWS announced in April 2026 that Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins and paid subscriptions will reach end of support on April 30, 2027. New Q Developer account and subscription creation for the affected experience was blocked from May 15, 2026. Existing customers can continue using the IDE plugins during the transition period,

AWS’s documentation now carries the same warning and explicitly recommends Kiro for capabilities similar to the Q Developer IDE plugins, including agentic coding, chat, and MCP support. AWS describes Kiro as a standalone agentic development environment built around spec-driven development.

That changes the buying decision considerably. Someone already using Q Developer does not need to abandon it immediately; the announced support window provides time to migrate. But a developer choosing an AI coding environment from scratch in September 2026 should think carefully before building a long-term workflow around a product whose IDE plugin is scheduled for retirement.

The distinction also explains why some current AWS pages still advertise Q Developer’s familiar features and pricing. The product remains documented and operational during the transition, and AWS continues to support Q Developer in several first-party AWS experiences. The sunset is specifically important for the IDE plugins and associated subscription experience.

Pricing Looks Attractive, but Availability Changes the Equation

AWS lists two Q Developer tiers: a perpetual Free tier and a Pro tier priced at $19 per user per month. The published Free tier includes 50 agentic requests per month and up to 1,000 lines of Java transformation per month. Pro provides higher limits, administration features, and IP indemnity, among other differences.

For existing customers, the $19 price remains useful context. AWS says Pro provides 1,000 agentic chat interactions per month and a pooled allocation of 4,000 lines of code per month for Java upgrades, with additional Java transformation usage charged at $0.003 per submitted line of code.

The problem is that pricing alone can give a misleading impression to a new buyer. AWS announced that new Q Developer accounts and subscriptions for the affected IDE experience stopped being available on May 15, 2026. Existing subscriptions can continue during the transition.

So Q Developer’s pricing is best understood as current pricing for an existing product during its migration period, rather than a straightforward invitation for new developers to commit to the IDE product for years.

Security and Enterprise Controls Are Part of the Appeal

For professional development teams, Q Developer offers more than code generation. AWS lists reference tracking, controls for suppressing public-code suggestions, secure cloud processing, and different data-collection settings between Free and Pro tiers. Pro also includes IP indemnity. 

AWS says Q Developer is built on Amazon Bedrock and uses multiple foundation models, with model routing intended to select an appropriate model for a task. Its documentation also describes security controls inherited from the Bedrock environment.

These controls make Q Developer more relevant to organizations than a simple autocomplete plugin. Even so, enterprise teams should evaluate their own compliance, data-governance, identity, and software-supply-chain requirements rather than treating a vendor’s security features as a substitute for internal review.

Who Should Still Consider Amazon Q Developer?

The strongest case is an existing AWS-heavy development organization already using Q Developer.

For those teams, the tool can provide useful assistance with application code, AWS questions, testing, security review, debugging, and modernization without forcing an immediate workflow change. The announced April 2027 deadline gives existing users time to assess Kiro and other alternatives.

It can also make sense as a short-term evaluation for developers who already have access through an existing organization or account and want to understand the migration path. The Free tier and relatively straightforward Pro pricing are attractive on paper, although new-user availability is now the limiting factor.

For a brand-new developer looking for a long-lived general-purpose coding assistant, the calculation is different. GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini Code Assist, Claude Code, Codex, and Kiro all deserve consideration depending on the preferred editor, model ecosystem, agentic workflow, and cloud platform. Gartner’s current alternatives research lists several of these products among the main alternatives considered by Q Developer users.

The Verdict Depends on When You Enter the Story

Amazon Q Developer remains a capable development assistant, particularly when software work intersects heavily with AWS. Its combination of code generation, workspace context, testing, security analysis, AWS guidance, agentic workflows, and transformation tools makes clear why it became a significant AWS developer product.

But the 2026 lifecycle announcement cannot be treated as a footnote. AWS is moving the IDE experience toward Kiro, with Q Developer IDE plugin support scheduled to end on April 30, 2027. For existing users, that means planning rather than panic. For new buyers, it means Q Developer is difficult to recommend as a long-term IDE investment when AWS itself is pointing developers toward its successor.

In practical terms, Amazon Q Developer is still worth understanding—and potentially worth continuing to use if you already have it—but it is no longer the obvious starting point for a new AI coding workflow. The better strategic question for 2026 is whether Q Developer’s AWS-specific strengths justify staying through the transition, or whether moving directly to Kiro or another coding assistant makes more sense.