Amazon Kiro is the newest contender in the rapidly evolving world of AI-powered development environments, positioning itself as a competitor to Windsurf and Cursor. Released by AWS, Kiro differentiates itself through "spec-driven development" a structured approach where AI agents help you plan, generate, and validate code through formal specifications rather than just freeform prompting or vibe coding as some call it.
Pricing Tiers
| Plan | Monthly Cost | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50 |
| Pro | $20 | 1,000 |
| Pro+ | $40 | 2,000 |
| Power | $200 | 10,000 |
Credits can be confusing but here is how Kiro breaks it down.
"A credit is a unit of work in response to user prompts. Simple prompts can consume less than 1 credit. More complex prompts, such as executing a spec task, typically cost more than 1 credit. Additionally, different models consume credits at different rates, with a prompt executed via Sonnet 4 costing more credits than executing it with Auto. For example, a given task that consumes X credits to execute in Auto, will cost you 1.3X credits to execute via Sonnet 4. Credits are metered to the second decimal point, so the least number of credits a task can consume is 0.01 credits."
Not very easy to align credits with tokens is it? Not sure if there is a reason for this level of abstraction but it does make the pricing more opaque.
Spec-Driven Development
Aside from the pricing, Kiro seems to be a pretty compelling option. Unlike other AI coding IDEs, Kiro can work in two different modes: AI-assisted coding or spec-driven development. The spec-driven development mode is particularly valuable for teams working in agile environments where user stories are already defined with detailed specifications. Users can copy and paste directly from their story into Kiro and let it generate the implementation.
I find this incredibly helpful for me because my world has always been spec-driven. It also allows me to collaborate with Kiro to make sure it really understands the ask instead of prompting multiple times to get what I need like I need to do with other tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor.
Powers: Supercharged Capabilities
Kiro also makes use of something they call Powers. It basically supercharges your Kiro instance with tools that may be applicable to what you are building. An example of this is the Strands agent power that helps Kiro understand how to build using the Strands SDK in AWS. I personalty used this for a project inside of Presidio as a starting point for multi Agent A2A for the FSI industry. It was great for showing the art of the possible without me having to spend days or weeks building out all of the different agents I needed.
Agents are not just limited to the pre-built solutions AWS offers you can build your own for your specific use case whether it be for internal or external systems. If you are interested in building your own take a look here Kiro Strands Power
Final Thoughts
Overall Kiro has been impressive. It's not perfect and at times I need to re-prompt to get it to build what I want, but it's better than spending days or weeks on a POC just to proved the art of the possible. Kiro has the opportunity to be a game change especially in large enterprises. The biggest hurtle they'll face is Copilot and how deeply integrated organizations are with Github ecosystem.
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