Amazon Q Developer
An AWS coding assistant offering inline suggestions, chat, and agentic tasks across IDEs and the console. AWS is sunsetting Q Developer in favor of Kiro — new signups closed May 2026.
Alternatives
Overview
Amazon Q Developer (formerly CodeWhisperer) is AWS's AI coding assistant, built specifically around the AWS ecosystem and designed for developers building cloud-native applications on AWS infrastructure. Its primary differentiator is deep awareness of AWS APIs, SDKs, and service integrations: suggestions for S3 operations, Lambda functions, DynamoDB queries, and IAM policies are noticeably more accurate and idiomatic than general-purpose coding tools that generate AWS code from generic training data. Q Developer includes a security scanning feature that checks code for common vulnerabilities, SQL injection, path traversal, cross-site scripting, using Amazon's own security tooling.
The free tier is generous: unlimited code suggestions and 50 security scans per month at no cost. The Professional tier at $19/user/month adds team features, organizational policies, and expanded scan limits. Q Developer integrates with VS Code, JetBrains, and the AWS console directly.
For teams already committed to AWS, who write Lambda functions, CloudFormation templates, and CDK constructs regularly, it adds AWS-specific accuracy that justifies using it alongside or instead of more general alternatives.
Key Features
- Code generation
- Security vulnerability scanning
- AWS service integration
- IDE plugins
- Reference tracking
- • Best for AWS-heavy projects
- • Built-in security scanner
- • Free for individual use
- • Tracks open-source references
- • Less impressive outside AWS ecosystem
- • Not as capable as Cursor for complex tasks
- • JetBrains support is limited
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