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If you're only hearing this now: AWS closed Amazon Q Developer to new signups on 15 May 2026. Existing subscriptions can still add seats, but a developer trying to sign up today cannot. Support ends 30 April 2027, and AWS points new users at Kiro instead. This isn't a rumor — it's in AWS's own end-of-support announcement.
So the question most people actually have isn't "Amazon Q vs. X" anymore. It's "I can't get into Amazon Q, what do I use."
We track 11 AI coding tools and re-verify pricing against each vendor's own page. One of the closer substitutes, especially if you want an agent rather than inline completions, is Claude Code.
What you'd be giving up
Amazon Q's free tier and workspace-level codebase context are real things people relied on, and they're gone for new users along with the signup window. If you already have an active Q subscription, nothing changes for you today — this is about everyone else.
What Claude Code does differently
Claude Code is Anthropic's terminal-based coding agent — no GUI, no inline ghost text, you talk to it in plain English and it reads your files, reasons about the problem, writes code, and runs commands. It builds full-project context rather than per-workspace context, which is the main functional gap versus what Q offered. MCP support is there if you want to wire in other tools.
What it costs
Claude Code is usage-metered: Pro is $20/mo, Max (5x) is $100/mo, Max (20x) is $200/mo. Verified against Anthropic's own pricing page. Amazon Q Developer's Pro tier was $19/user/mo for existing subscriptions — close enough in price that cost isn't really the deciding factor here; what you're actually choosing between is a terminal agent versus whatever Kiro turns out to be.
The honest answer
We kept the full comparison up because "what happened to it and what do I use instead" is a real, recurring question, not because this is a fair head-to-head anymore. If you're migrating off Q, Claude Code is one credible landing spot — it isn't the only one, and if your workflow depended specifically on Q's AWS-native integrations, Kiro is probably the more direct replacement. We haven't tested Kiro ourselves, so we're not going to pretend we have a view on it yet.
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