For anyone wondering, Amazon already offers an Agentic coding CLI similar to Claude Code: https://github.com/aws/amazon-q-developer-cli
It has a pretty decent free tier, and maybe the subscription is better value than Claude Code, but hard to tell.
It supports MCP as well.
Amazon Q also has a VC Code and IntelliJ Idea plugin too, Kiro goes beyond what you can do as a plugin in VS Code though, similar to why Cursor had to fork VS Code.
Q CLI is great. It’s basically Claude models but pretty much unlimited and only for $20
Not as polished as Claude Code but also a bit price difference
That sounds too good to be true, and it seems like they are indeed introducing a usage system similar to their competitors next month?
> Starting August 1, 2025, we’re introducing a new pricing plan for Amazon Q Developer designed to make things simpler and more valuable for developers.
> Pro Tier: Expanded limits $19/mo. per user
> 1,000 agentic requests per month included (starting 8/1/2025)
- https://aws.amazon.com/q/developer/pricing/
Previously agentic use was apparently "free", but with a set deadline in June, so it seems like this was just for a testing phase?
Q CLI has so many issues though, injects so much junk into you shell profiles it can slow down your terminal invocations by seconds, and it doesn't support standard streamableHttp / SSE MCP servers.
That's for the shell auto-complete feature which I turn off.