Pricing
Is Kiro Free? (2026) Kiro Free Tier, Limits and Who Can Use It
Is Kiro free? What the free tier includes, whether you can use it for personal or commercial work, student access, and when Pro is worth paying for.
10 min read
Kiro’s FAQ, license and student offer re-checked Nov 9, 2026 on kiro.dev/faq, kiro.dev/license and kiro.dev/students; plan prices and the first-upgrade free trial checked Nov 4, 2026 on kiro.dev/pricing and in Kiro’s billing docs; credit multipliers checked Nov 4, 2026 in Kiro’s models docs. Every source is listed at the bottom. No affiliate links on this page (how we work).
Short answer: yes, Kiro is free, with 50 credits a month and no published personal-only rule. Kiro calls it the “perpetual Kiro Free tier, which includes 50 credits”. It includes “access to open weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5, with limits” (Kiro FAQ, checked Nov 9, 2026). It is not unlimited. When the 50 credits are gone, Free users wait for next month. Add-on credits are for paid plans only.
Personal or commercial use: none of Kiro’s pricing, FAQ or license pages limit the free tier to personal or non-commercial use. Kiro is licensed under the AWS Customer Agreement on every plan, so that’s the document to read if your work is commercial. Two things do change between Free and paid, though: Kiro may use Free-tier content for service improvement (you can opt out), and the output indemnity is for paid subscribers only. More on both below.
Students: eligible students at select universities get 1,000 credits a month free for a year. That’s Pro’s credit count, at $0.
Trying Pro: since Nov 1, 2026, your first upgrade from Free to Pro makes the rest of that month free and adds 500 trial credits to use within 12 months. The old $20 first-upgrade credit is gone for new upgrades.
We haven’t tested Kiro. Everything below comes from Kiro’s own pages.
Kiro plans and credits
USD per user per month, from kiro.dev/pricing, checked Nov 4, 2026. Prices exclude tax.
| Plan | Price | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50 |
| Students | $0 for 1 year | 1,000 |
| Pro | $20 | 1,000 |
| Pro+ | $40 | 2,000 |
| Pro Max | $100 | 5,000 |
| Power | $200 | 10,000 |
Paid plans can buy add-on credits at $0.04 each, in packs that “range from $5 (125 credits) to $100” (Kiro FAQ, checked Nov 9, 2026). No yearly price is published. The student row comes from kiro.dev/students (checked Nov 9, 2026). The full paid-plan breakdown is in Kiro pricing, and the two top tiers are compared in Kiro Pro vs Power.
The first-upgrade free trial (since Nov 1, 2026)
Kiro’s pricing page banner reads: “Free trial: when you first upgrade to Pro, you’ll get the rest of the month free, plus 500 trial credits to use within 12 months” (kiro.dev/pricing, checked Nov 4, 2026). The FAQ spells out the mechanics (checked Nov 9, 2026):
- Fees and credits are “prorated to the second”. Kiro’s example: upgrade to Pro at 00:00 UTC on the 15th of a 30-day month and “you pay $0 and get 533 plan credits plus 500 trial credits.”
- “Trial credits are used after you run out of plan credits.” “Upgrading to a paid subscription requires a valid credit card.”
- Start on Pro+, Pro Max or Power instead and “the free Pro month still counts”; you pay only the difference (“$10.67 for Pro+ in the same scenario”).
- Drop back to Free and “your unused trial credits carry over, but you can only spend them on free-tier models.”
- “The free trial applies only to your first upgrade.”
The old offer ended for new upgrades on Nov 1, 2026: before that date, first-time upgraders got a $20 credit. Kiro’s FAQ says “If you upgraded before November 1, you keep the $20 discount and your unused credits.”
What the free tier includes
From Kiro’s FAQ (checked Nov 9, 2026) and models docs (checked Nov 4, 2026):
- 50 credits. Usage limits “reset at the start of each billing month”, and “Unused credits do not roll over to the next month.”
- Models: the FAQ says Free includes “access to open weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5, with limits”. The models docs list Free’s set as Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.0, Auto, DeepSeek 3.2, MiniMax M2.5, GLM-5, MiniMax M2.1 and Qwen3 Coder Next. Premium models like Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Opus 5 are paid-plan only.
- IDE and CLI. Kiro’s FAQ says you can download the installer, “or sign in to use it with a paid account on the web or mobile”. So Kiro Web and mobile are for paid accounts, and Free means the desktop app and CLI.
- No AWS account needed. “You do not need an AWS account to use Kiro.” You can sign in with GitHub, Google, AWS Builder ID or AWS IAM Identity Center.
- Usage tracking. Your dashboard shows credits used and left, “updated at least every 5 minutes”.
What Free doesn’t get: add-on credits, Kiro Enterprise, and AWS GovCloud. The FAQ says “The free tier is not available in Kiro Enterprise or AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.”
How far 50 credits go
Kiro doesn’t price per prompt. “Simple prompts can consume less than 1 credit. More complex prompts, such as executing a spec task, typically cost more than 1 credit.” Credits are “metered to the second decimal point” (Kiro FAQ, checked Nov 9, 2026).
The model you pick changes the cost a lot. Kiro’s models docs (checked Nov 4, 2026) list these multipliers on Free, relative to Auto at 1.0x:
| Model | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| Auto | 1.0x |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | 1.3x |
| GLM-5 | 0.5x |
| DeepSeek 3.2 | 0.25x |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0.25x |
| MiniMax M2.1 | 0.15x |
| Qwen3 Coder Next | 0.05x |
Kiro’s own example: a task that costs 10 credits on Auto costs “0.5 credits on Qwen3 Coder Next”. Model selection is “only available for chat experience”, though, so spec tasks don’t get the cheap pick.
Kiro doesn’t publish a fixed credits-per-spec number, so nobody can honestly promise “50 credits = X features”. The practical read: 50 credits on Sonnet 4.5 is a trial. 50 credits spent on chat with Qwen3 Coder Next goes much further, at 0.05x.
Can you use Kiro free for personal or commercial work?
Here’s what Kiro’s pages say, and what they don’t.
No personal-only rule is published. We found no line on kiro.dev/pricing, kiro.dev/faq or kiro.dev/license that restricts Free to personal or non-commercial use (checked Nov 9, 2026).
The license is AWS’s. “The Kiro IDE and Kiro CLI are each licensed to you as “AWS Content” under the AWS Customer Agreement or other written agreement with us governing your use of AWS services, and the AWS Intellectual Property License” (kiro.dev/license, checked Nov 9, 2026). That’s the same document on every plan. If you’re using Kiro for client work, read it. This page isn’t legal advice.
Two real differences for commercial work:
- Your content and training. “We may use certain content from Kiro Free Tier and Kiro subscribers that access Kiro through a social login provider or AWS Builder ID for service improvement. You can opt out of content collection at any time” (Kiro FAQ, checked Nov 9, 2026). Paid users who sign in through AWS IAM Identity Center or an external identity provider are excluded. Working on a client’s private code on Free? Turn on the opt-out first.
- Indemnity. “We provide an output indemnity for paid Kiro subscribers”, subject to Kiro’s excluded models and Section 50.10 of the AWS Service Terms. Free isn’t covered.
So for side projects, Free is fine. For paid client work, Free still works on paper, but the missing indemnity is a reason to pay. Note that paid users on social login or Builder ID are in the same content-use bucket as Free; only paid sign-ins through IAM Identity Center or an external identity provider are excluded.
Is Kiro free for students?
Yes, at select universities. “Eligible university students get 1,000 credits per month free for one year.” “No credit card required” (kiro.dev/students, checked Nov 9, 2026).
The rules, from the same page:
- Only “select universities”. The school list is on the page. Your Kiro account doesn’t need your university email, but SheerID verification asks for “your university email address (e.g., .edu, .ca)”.
- You must be at least 18. Verification runs through SheerID, sometimes with a student ID or enrollment letter.
- “Credits do not roll over month to month, and add-on credits are not available.”
- After a year you’re “automatically downgraded to the Kiro free tier.”
Is Kiro free and unlimited?
No. Free is capped at 50 credits a month, model access comes “with limits”, and Free users can’t buy add-on credits. Kiro doesn’t publish what those limits are on the pages we read (checked Nov 9, 2026). Even paid plans have caps: credits reset monthly and don’t roll over, and only add-on packs carry over (they “expire 12 months from the date of purchase”).
“With limits” and no numbers is a frustrating way to describe a free tier. Kiro publishes a per-model multiplier table to two decimal places, then goes vague on the one limit free users hit first. Publish the limits.
When Pro is worth it
Pro is $20 a month for 1,000 credits, 20 times Free. It adds premium models, add-on credits, Kiro Web and mobile, and the output indemnity. Your first upgrade from Free makes the rest of that month free and adds 500 trial credits to use within 12 months (Kiro FAQ, checked Nov 9, 2026). Kiro bills paid plans on the 1st of each month.
Pay when either of these happens twice: you run out of 50 credits before mid-month, or you need a premium model for real work. Timing tip: the free part of the trial is the rest of the month you upgrade in, so upgrading early in a month gets you more free Pro days than upgrading on the 28th. If you’re a student at a listed university, apply for the student offer first. It’s Pro’s credits for free.
Comparing editors? See Kiro vs Cursor, Is Cursor free?, Is Antigravity free?, Cursor alternatives or the full field in AI coding tools compared.
Here’s what I’d do
Start on Free with the cheap models in chat. Qwen3 Coder Next at 0.05x stretches 50 credits furthest.
Save credits for one spec. Spec tasks “typically cost more than 1 credit”, so try spec mode on one real feature, not five toys.
Turn on the content opt-out if the code isn’t yours to share.
Students: check the list, then verify. 1,000 credits a month is Pro’s allowance at $0.
Upgrade to Pro for client work, early in a month. Indemnity and premium models are the real reasons. The first-upgrade trial makes the rest of that month free, so don’t waste it on the last day.
Want to know how far 50 credits go? Kiro credits explained covers multipliers and resets.
Coming from AWS tools? Kiro Pro vs Amazon Q Developer Pro explains how the two plans differ and where AWS is steering IDE users.
Getting Error sending prompt on the free plan? The Kiro error-sending-prompt fix separates network, credit and outage causes.
If Kiro won’t start at all, the Kiro error code 21 fix explains the startup crash and what to try first.
Choosing between Kiro and Google’s agent IDE? See Kiro Pro vs Antigravity.
Want the monthly caps for every plan? Kiro usage limits has them, plus what happens at zero.
FAQ
Is Kiro free for personal use? Yes, Kiro’s perpetual Free tier includes 50 credits a month with Claude Sonnet 4.5 and open-weight models.
Is Kiro free for students? Eligible students at select universities get 1,000 credits a month free for one year, verified through SheerID.
Can I use Kiro free commercially? Kiro’s pages publish no personal-only rule for Free, but paid plans add output indemnity, so read the AWS Customer Agreement for client work.
Is Kiro free and unlimited? No, Free has 50 credits a month, rate limits, and no add-on credits.
How much is Kiro Pro? Kiro Pro is $20 per user a month for 1,000 credits.
Is there a Kiro free trial of Pro? Yes, since Nov 1, 2026 your first upgrade from Free to Pro makes the rest of that month free and adds 500 trial credits to use within 12 months.
Sources
- Kiro FAQ (perpetual Free tier with 50 credits, open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5 “with limits”, free trial on first upgrade, $20 discount kept for pre-Nov 1 upgrades, monthly reset, no rollover, add-on packs, web and mobile need a paid account, no AWS account needed, content use and opt-out, output indemnity for paid subscribers, Free not in Enterprise or GovCloud, credit definition): https://kiro.dev/faq/ (verified 2026-11-09)
- Kiro license (AWS Customer Agreement and AWS Intellectual Property License): https://kiro.dev/license/ (verified 2026-11-09)
- Kiro student offer (1,000 credits a month for one year, eligibility, SheerID, no add-ons, downgrade): https://kiro.dev/students/ (verified 2026-11-09)
- Kiro pricing page (plan prices and credits, add-on credits at $0.04, free-trial banner, metering to the second decimal point): https://kiro.dev/pricing/ (verified 2026-11-04)
- Kiro billing docs (first upgrade from Nov 1, 2026: rest of month free plus 500 trial credits, proration to the second): https://kiro.dev/docs/billing/ (verified 2026-11-04)
- Kiro models docs (Free model list, credit multipliers, chat-only model selection, 10-credit example): https://kiro.dev/docs/models/ (verified 2026-11-04)