We went back to update our Copilot vs Amazon Q Developer comparison and found the pricing section giving advice that's no longer possible to follow: "the free tier of Amazon Q makes this easy to try without additional cost." You can't. AWS closed Amazon Q Developer to new signups on 15 May 2026.
Here's what's still true, what changed, and what the comparison actually means for someone deciding today.
What held up
Six months of parallel use across GitHub-hosted projects (Copilot) and AWS-deployed services (Q) produced a consistent split, and none of it changed:
Autocomplete. Copilot is the broader generalist — 85% immediately-usable suggestions across TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, Rust and more in our testing. Amazon Q is narrower but sharper on AWS-specific code: on a DynamoDB/SQS/Lambda-heavy project, Q's suggestions for AWS SDK calls were correct about 90% of the time against Copilot's 75% on the same patterns — Copilot sometimes proposed deprecated SDK patterns or missed required parameters that Q got right.
Chat. Ask Amazon Q a DynamoDB-with-CDK question and it returns precise, current construct names and best-practice patterns. Ask it why a Lambda is timing out writing to S3 and it walks the actual AWS-specific causes — VPC config, IAM permissions, endpoint access, payload size. Copilot Chat is the better generalist; Q is the better specialist for exactly one cloud.
Security scanning. Amazon Q's built-in scanner caught a hardcoded connection string and an unvalidated input we'd deliberately left as test cases. It's not a SAST-tool replacement, but catching issues while you type beats waiting for a CI job. Copilot doesn't have an equivalent built-in feature.
The unique Q capability worth naming: the /transform agent, which can take a Java 8 codebase and generate an actual modernization plan to Java 17 — framework upgrades, deprecated API swaps, breaking changes included. Copilot has nothing like it.
What's stale, and why it matters more than a price tag
AWS blocked new Amazon Q Developer signups on 15 May 2026. Existing subscriptions can still add seats; a developer starting fresh today cannot create an account at all. Support for existing users ends 30 April 2027. AWS's own end-of-support announcement names Kiro as where new users go instead — and AWS has kept building there, shipping an autonomous multi-agent orchestrator ("Kiro Crew") on 4 August 2026 with no Q Developer equivalent.
Our original piece missed this and its pricing section still reads like Q is a live option: a "Free tier" and "Pro ($19/user/month)" presented as things you can sign up for, capped with "the free tier of Amazon Q makes this easy to try." That advice was accurate when we wrote it and has been wrong for almost four months.
We haven't independently tested Kiro, so we're not claiming it replicates the AWS-specific depth described above — that's a separate piece of research, not something we're folding into this correction.
One more gap worth flagging honestly: Copilot's own pricing has moved since this page was written too. It described Free/Pro ($10/mo)/Business ($19/seat)/Enterprise ($39/seat) — all still accurate — but GitHub has since added a Pro+ tier at $39/month and a Max tier at $100/month, neither mentioned on the original page. Not wrong, just incomplete; we're noting it here rather than silently pretending the four-tier picture was always there.
What this actually means if you're deciding today
If you're new to either tool, this isn't a comparison anymore — it's Copilot, full stop, because the other option isn't purchasable. If you already have Amazon Q access, the technical verdict above still holds: keep it for AWS-specific work, lean on Copilot everywhere else, and start planning your Kiro evaluation before 30 April 2027.
Disclosure: DevTools Review has no confirmed affiliate or commission relationship with either GitHub Copilot or Amazon Q Developer — GitHub runs a partner programme for extension builders, not a publisher affiliate programme, and AWS runs a partner network rather than a per-referral affiliate programme.
Full comparison, pricing tables and FAQ: https://devtoolsreview.com/comparisons/copilot-vs-amazon-q-2026/
Top comments (0)