Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins to be discontinued April 30, 2027 as AWS shifts to Kiro

AWS announced that Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins across VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse, and Visual Studio will reach end of support on April 30, 2027, giving existing users 12 months to transition to Kiro, a new agentic development environment.

Timeline and restrictions

Starting May 15, 2026, AWS will block new Q Developer Free Tier account creation via Builder ID in IDE plugins and new Q Developer subscription creation via the AWS Console. Existing customers retain access to IDE plugins until the April 30, 2027 end-of-support date.

Starting May 29, 2026, Opus 4.6 will no longer be available on Q Developer Pro. According to AWS, Opus 4.5 and all other existing models remain available, while the latest coding models including Opus 4.7 are exclusive to Kiro.

IDE plugin listings will remain published on all four IDE marketplaces with deprecation notices. AWS commits to pushing critical bugfixes to existing users through the transition window.

What is Kiro

Kiro is AWS's replacement product, described as an agentic development environment (IDE and CLI) built for spec-driven development. Key features include:

• Specs: Structured natural-language requirements that drive end-to-end implementation
• Hooks: Automated triggers on file save, commit, or other events to enforce standards and run tests
• Steering files: Project-level configuration providing persistent context about architecture and conventions
• Custom subagents: Specialized AI agents for domain-specific tasks like security review or API contract validation
• Powers: Composable capability modules that extend agentic behavior

According to AWS, Kiro includes all existing Q Developer capabilities: agentic coding, inline chat, terminal integration, and MCP support.

What remains unchanged

Amazon Q Developer in the AWS Management Console, AWS Documentation Website, AWS Marketing Website, AWS Console Mobile App, and chat apps (Slack and Microsoft Teams) are not affected by this sunset and will continue operating.

What this means

AWS is executing a hard pivot from traditional IDE plugin architecture to a purpose-built agentic development environment. The 24-month transition window (12 months for new signups, 24 months total for existing users) is generous by industry standards, but the move fragments AWS's developer AI offerings across two distinct products during the transition.

The decision to make newer models like Opus 4.7 exclusive to Kiro creates a forcing function for migration but also signals AWS's bet that spec-driven development represents a fundamental shift in how developers will work with AI, beyond code completion and chat interfaces. Whether developers adopt Kiro's structured specification approach over the more familiar prompt-based workflows remains to be seen.