Catalog Systems Agent IDEs & coding harnesses Amazon Q Developer

Amazon Q Developer

https://aws.amazon.com/q/developer/

Amazon's developer-focused agent — formerly CodeWhisperer (renamed 2024-Q4). Available as IDE plugins (VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Eclipse), in AWS Console, and CLI. Strong AWS-tooling integration: Q can read CloudWatch, troubleshoot IAM, suggest AWS-SDK code. Companion to Kiro for spec-driven flows. End of support for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins is set for 2027-04-30 per an AWS notice, which points users to Kiro as the successor.

Deprecated. superseded by a successor product Source · Alternatives and migration notes →

Deprecated · Verified 2026-10-31 · fresh as of 2026-10-31 · 59 cited facts, 2 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction

At a glance

Type
AWS-hosted developer AI agent + IDE plugins vendor fix
Tier
T1
Section
Agent IDEs & coding harnesses
Created
2023-04 (as CodeWhisperer); rebranded Amazon Q 2024-Q4 vendor fix
Latest release
not applicable — not OSS fix
License
not applicable — not OSS fix
GitHub
not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
Pricing
Free tier (50 agentic requests/mo); Pro $19/user/mo — new subscriptions closed from 2026-05-15 vendor fix
Funding
Amazon / AWS (parent — public, NASDAQ:AMZN) vendor fix
Freshness
2026-10-31 fix
Layer
agent-infra repo fix
Licensing
commercial vendor fix
Deployment locus
ide vendor fix
Platform vs product
product vendor fix

When to use

Optimised for: AWS-SDK + CloudWatch + IAM-aware coding agent

Anti-fit: AWS-centric — best when your stack is on AWS

Pros & cons

Pros

Only major coding agent with first-class AWS-service context (CloudWatch, IAM, CloudFormation) baked in; AWS procurement is already in place at most enterprises.

Cons

AWS-centric — limited value off-AWS; less polished editing UX than Cursor / Windsurf.

Claims & capabilities

AWS-built; renamed from CodeWhisperer 2023; broad AWS-developer audience.

Technical surface

API surface
IDE plugins (VS Code, JetBrains, VS, Eclipse) + AWS Console + CLI
Backend storage
AWS-hosted
Deployment
Managed-only — AWS-hosted service via IDE plugins, AWS Console and CLI
Embedding model
not applicable — not a memory product
Multi-tenancy
AWS account isolation
MCP
yes — MCP support in Q Developer agentic coding (carried over to successor Kiro per AWS)
A2A
searched not found
OpenTelemetry
searched not found

Alternatives to Amazon Q Developer → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support

Similar systems

Other agent ides & coding harnesses in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.

  • Claude Code (Anthropic) T1

    Anthropic's agentic coding tool: Claude as a coding agent in the terminal, IDEs (VS Code, JetBrains), desktop app, web/mobile, GitHub and Slack. Context via CLAUDE.md, skills, hooks, subagents and MCP servers.

  • Cursor (IDE) T1

    AI-first IDE that forked VS Code; Composer (multi-file edit) and Agent Mode (long-running coding agent) are its flagship surfaces. Memory layer = .cursorrules / Rules; recall via repo-aware Context Engine. Anysphere (parent) raised $900M Series C at $9.9B in May 2025; acquired by SpaceX (announced 2026-08-14, terms undisclosed), product continues under the Cursor brand.

  • OpenAI Codex CLI T1

    OpenAI's actively developed OSS terminal coding agent (Apr 2025), now written in Rust (codex-rs replaced the original TS CLI); also IDE extension + desktop app. Separate from the Codex Web cloud agent and the retired 2021 Codex model API. The codex mcp-server command (Codex as an MCP server) was deprecated on 2026-08-24 and removed in CLI 0.154.0 (2026-09-09); OpenAI points integrations to the experimental Codex app server, and codex mcp still connects Codex to external MCP servers.

  • Opencode (SST) T2

    SST team's open-source terminal coding agent — TypeScript, multi-model, MCP-native. Released 2025; explicitly positioned as a permissively-licensed Claude Code alternative. Memory via AGENTS.md (the emerging cross-harness convention).

  • Bedrock AgentCore (AWS) T2

    AWS Bedrock AgentCore — managed runtime to deploy + scale + observe agents. Multi-component: Runtime, Identity, Memory, Gateway, Browser, Code Interpreter, Observability. Distinct from Bedrock Agents (older fixed-config product); AgentCore is the 2025 framework-agnostic runtime for any agent (LangGraph, CrewAI, Strands, OpenAI Agents SDK).

  • GitHub Copilot (Agent Mode) T1

    The original AI coding assistant (Copilot in editor; 2021). 2025 evolved into a full agentic surface: chat, completions, Agent Mode (multi-step), and Copilot Workspace. Backed by Microsoft. Distinct row from Workspace — this row covers the everyday in-editor + agent mode product, Workspace covers the hosted spec-driven workflow.

Sources (58 cited facts, 2 third-party)

Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).

What changed

Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)

  1. 2026-10-26
    • Lifecycle first recorded as “superseded”
    • Pricing “Free tier + Pro $19/user/mo” → “Free tier (50 agentic requests/mo); Pro $19/user/mo — new subscriptions closed from 2026-05-15” source
    • Deployment “Cloud (AWS-hosted)” → “Managed-only — AWS-hosted service via IDE plugins, AWS Console and CLI” source
    • MCP support first recorded as “yes — MCP support in Q Developer agentic coding (carried over to successor Kiro per AWS)” source
    #258

Related systems

References (1)