AWS has introduced new pricing for Kiro, its AI-driven coding tool, but unlike the pricing originally announced, the latest plans are "a wallet-wrecking tragedy," according to many of its users.
"Kiro's spec-driven AI IDE is a gem," said open source PHP and Laravel engineer Antonio Ribeiro on GitHub, "until I saw your new pricing."
AWS introduced Kiro last month as a fork of Code OSS (also used by Visual Studio Code) with a distinctive approach to AI coding assistance, based on specifications and tasks.
"Coming soon" pricing was shown from the start, and looked reasonable, as we reported in our initial hands-on. There were three plans, with free offering 50 interactions per month, Pro at $19.00 per user/month with 1,000 interactions, and Pro+ at $39.00 with 3,000 interactions. Additional interactions were to be $0.04 each.
Kiro proved immediately popular. A waitlist was introduced and the pricing disappeared. Last week, new pricing was announced, and to nobody's surprise it is less generous.
AWS now defines two types of Kiro AI request. Spec requests are those started from tasks, while vibe requests are general chat responses. Executing a sub-task consumes at least one spec request plus a vibe request for "coordination," according to an explanatory post. AWS has also given itself scope to consume more requests for a task or chat depending on complexity, whereas at the initial launch AWS developer advocate Nathan Peck reassured developers that a single interaction might be one that "potentially runs for 3-5 minutes of Kiro iterating away on writing code."
The revised pricing has a free tier with 50 vibe requests (yes, no spec requests at all); Pro at $20 with 225 vibe and 125 spec; Pro+ with 450 vibe and 250 spec; and Power at $200 with 2,250 vibe and 1,250 spec. Additional vibe requests are $0.04 each, while spec requests cost five times more, $0.20 each.
"Let's crunch the numbers," said Ribeiro. For light coding, he uses at least 3,000 spec requests per month, while he hardly uses vibe requests at all. "Vibe requests are useless because the vibe agent constantly nags me to switch to spec requests, claiming my chats are 'too complex'," he reported. He estimated that light coding will cost him around $550 per month and full time coding around $1,950 per month. As an open source developer who builds for the community, "this pricing is a kick in the shins," he said.
Another GitHub issue on the subject complains that the Pro+ allocated monthly limits "were completely consumed within 15 minutes of usage in a single chat session."
Likewise, the Kiro Discord community includes many complaints about the opaque pricing and the surprising number of requests consumed, many more than the documentation suggests. "In practice, when I make one request, Kiro has already consumed four to six vibe requests. It never consumes just one," said one comment.
According to Ribeiro, Kiro's competitors are cheaper by a wide margin, including Amazon Q, which costs $40 for 3,000 requests, Trae, which has unlimited requests (but can be slow), and Windsurf, which is "way more affordable for experimenting."
We have asked Amazon for comment.
Views vary on the value of AI for developers, but the Kiro pricing issue shows another kind of risk – that costs can escalate unexpectedly. ®