Aws Pricing For Kiro Dev Tool Dubbed ‘a Wallet Wrecking Tragedy’

Updated 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.”

Views vary on the value of AI for developers, but the Kiro pricing issue shows another kind of risk – that costs can escalate unexpectedly. ®

Updated to add on August 20:

AWS has been in touch to flag up what it described as a pricing bug, adding that it was taking another look at user limits.

A spokesperson told The Register: “First, we have heard many of you are surprised by how quickly you are using included requests. We are surprised as well! As we have dug into this, we have discovered that we introduced a bug when we rolled out pricing in Kiro where some tasks are inaccurately consuming multiple requests.

“That’s causing people to burn through their limits much faster than expected. The team is actively working on a fix for this issue which we expect to roll out in a couple of days. We will also be resetting the limits of any users impacted by this bug.”

The web giant added: “We’ve also heard more general concerns that the current limits don’t give you enough room to get meaningful work done. We believe that much of this perception is coming from the aforementioned issue which is causing users to deplete their limits faster than intended. We set our limits based on actual customer behavior during the preview, and we continue to believe that we have defined the tiers in a way that Kiro will provide exceptional value for both casual and professional users. However, considering the confusion caused by the bug, we have decided to not charge for the month of August.

“This will allow you to experience the limits before committing to paying and give us additional time to ensure we selected these limits appropriately. If you have already been charged for August, we will refund you.

“We’re sorry for the headache this rollout has caused. We are excited about Kiro and we want to make sure that Kiro provides compelling value. Thanks for helping us throughout the preview with all the excellent feedback, and we look forward to hearing more as you get a chance to experience the new metering without the bug.”

Original Source