Amazon Q
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Last reviewed
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Amazon Q is a family of generative AI-powered assistants developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Announced on November 28, 2023, at the annual AWS re:Invent conference, Amazon Q is designed to help both software developers and business users by providing intelligent coding assistance, enterprise knowledge retrieval, and cloud operations support. The product family is split into two primary offerings: Amazon Q Developer, which targets software engineers and cloud practitioners, and Amazon Q Business, which serves enterprise employees with AI-driven search, summarization, and task automation across corporate data sources.
Amazon Q reached general availability (GA) on April 30, 2024, when AWS formally launched both Amazon Q Developer and Amazon Q Business. At launch, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky described Amazon Q as "a new type of generative AI powered assistant designed to work for you at work." Built on top of Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q uses multiple foundation models to handle different types of queries, routing requests to the most appropriate model for each task.
Amazon Q Developer traces its roots to Amazon CodeWhisperer, a code-generation tool that AWS first previewed in June 2022 and made generally available in April 2023. CodeWhisperer provided real-time code suggestions in supported IDEs, similar in concept to GitHub Copilot. While CodeWhisperer offered a competitive free tier, it struggled to match the adoption momentum of Copilot, which had already secured over 1.8 million paying individual subscribers and tens of thousands of corporate customers by that time.
At re:Invent 2023, AWS introduced the Amazon Q brand as an umbrella for its generative AI assistants. The initial preview included Amazon Q in the AWS Management Console, Amazon Q for business use cases, and an expanded set of developer tools that went beyond what CodeWhisperer offered. Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, called the Amazon Q announcement the "most important" reveal at re:Invent 2023.
On April 30, 2024, AWS officially rebranded CodeWhisperer as part of Amazon Q Developer, consolidating all developer-facing AI capabilities under the Amazon Q name. According to AWS leadership, "CodeWhisperer is where we got started with code generation, but we really wanted to have a brand and name that fit a wider set of use cases." The rebrand coincided with the GA launch of both Amazon Q Developer and Amazon Q Business, along with a preview of Amazon Q Apps.
All of CodeWhisperer's existing features carried over into Amazon Q Developer, including inline code suggestions, security scanning, and reference tracking. Q Developer expanded the scope significantly by adding autonomous agents for multi-step tasks, code transformation capabilities, infrastructure-as-code generation, and deep integration with the AWS console.
Amazon Q Developer is an AI-powered coding assistant designed to accelerate the entire software development lifecycle. It provides code generation, code review, debugging, security vulnerability scanning, application modernization, and infrastructure management capabilities.
Amazon Q Developer generates real-time code suggestions ranging from single-line snippets to full functions. It supports over 25 programming languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, shell scripting, SQL, and Scala. For infrastructure-as-code tasks, it also supports JSON, YAML, HCL (Terraform), AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CDK configurations.
Developers can describe features in natural language, and Amazon Q generates implementation plans spanning multiple files with complete code, tests, and API integrations. The system analyzes the entire project structure and workspace context to produce suggestions that align with existing code patterns and conventions.
The Amazon Q Developer Agent is an autonomous coding agent that can plan, implement, test, and iterate on software tasks with minimal human intervention. Introduced in its initial form in 2024 and significantly upgraded throughout 2025, the agent can:
In April 2025, AWS announced that the Amazon Q Developer Agent achieved a score of 66% on the SWE-bench Verified benchmark and 49% on SWT-bench, placing it among the top-ranked autonomous coding agents at the time. The agent architecture uses a multi-path exploration approach, generating several candidate solutions for a given problem, selecting the most promising one, and backtracking when it reaches dead ends.
Amazon Q Developer includes code transformation capabilities designed to modernize legacy applications. Key transformation features include:
| Transformation Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Java version upgrades | Upgrades applications from Java 8 or Java 11 to Java 17, updating deprecated APIs and dependencies |
| .NET modernization | Converts legacy .NET Framework 4.x applications to .NET 8, identifying deprecated APIs and suggesting cross-platform implementations |
| SQL migration | Automates conversion of embedded Oracle SQL statements in Java applications to PostgreSQL |
| Dependency updates | Identifies and updates mandatory package dependencies and frameworks |
| Security hardening | Incorporates security best practices and generates tests to validate upgraded applications |
The Free Tier allows transformation of up to 1,000 lines of code per month per user, while the Pro Tier provides 4,000 lines of code per month per user, pooled at the account level.
Amazon Q Developer offers built-in security scanning powered by thousands of security detectors across multiple programming languages. It provides three types of scanning:
The scanning runs in two modes. "Scan as you code" performs automatic background scanning in real time (Pro Tier only), while manual project scans are available in both the Free and Pro Tiers. Detected vulnerabilities include links to the relevant Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) entries, and many detections offer one-click suggested code fixes directly within the IDE.
Amazon Q Developer integrates with a broad set of development environments and platforms:
| Platform | Details |
|---|---|
| Visual Studio Code | Extension available via the VS Code Marketplace (minimum version 1.85.0) |
| JetBrains IDEs | Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and other JetBrains products (minimum version 2024.3) |
| Visual Studio | Available through the AWS Toolkit extension |
| Eclipse | Inline chat and code suggestions (preview) |
| Command Line | CLI integration with 250+ popular CLIs including git, aws, docker, npm, and yarn |
| AWS Management Console | Built-in chat for AWS-related questions, error troubleshooting, and resource management |
| GitHub | Preview integration for automated feature development, code review, and Java transformation in GitHub repositories |
| GitLab | GitLab Duo with Amazon Q integration (generally available as of 2025) |
| macOS Terminal | Supports iTerm2, macOS Terminal, Hyper, Tabby, VS Code integrated terminal, Alacritty, Kitty, and Wezterm |
Within the AWS Management Console, Amazon Q Developer can:
In May 2025, AWS launched a preview of Amazon Q Developer in GitHub. This integration allows developers to assign GitHub issues to Amazon Q Developer using labels, after which the agent autonomously implements features, generates bug fixes, creates pull requests, and runs code reviews. The integration works with both GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise Cloud. No AWS account is required to get started with the free tier. In September 2025, AWS added interactive debugging for GitHub code reviews, allowing developers to have back-and-forth conversations with Amazon Q during pull request reviews.
Amazon Q Business is a fully managed, generative AI-powered assistant designed for enterprise use. It enables employees to ask questions, get summaries, generate content, and complete tasks using their organization's internal data, while respecting existing access controls and permissions.
Amazon Q Business connects to over 40 enterprise data sources through pre-built connectors:
| Category | Supported Connectors |
|---|---|
| Cloud storage | Amazon S3, Amazon FSx, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive |
| Collaboration | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Exchange |
| Productivity | Gmail, Google Calendar (preview), Microsoft SharePoint (Cloud, Server 2016/2019, Subscription Edition) |
| Project management | Jira, Asana (preview), Smartsheet |
| Developer platforms | GitHub (Cloud and Server), Confluence (Cloud and Server) |
| CRM and support | Salesforce Online, ServiceNow Online, Zendesk |
| Content management | Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) |
| Custom | Amazon Q Business custom data source connector, Amazon Q Web Crawler |
All responses are permissions-aware, meaning that users only receive information they are authorized to access based on their existing identity and access management configurations.
Amazon Q Business uses retrieval-augmented generation to ground its responses in enterprise data. In August 2025, AWS launched Agentic RAG for Amazon Q Business, which significantly enhanced the system's ability to handle complex, multi-step queries. Key capabilities of Agentic RAG include:
Amazon Q Apps, which reached general availability in July 2024, allows users to create lightweight generative AI applications from natural language descriptions without writing code. These apps can automate workflows and tasks by leveraging the same enterprise data sources connected to Amazon Q Business.
Amazon Q integrates with several AWS analytics and business intelligence services:
Amazon Q uses a per-user subscription model with different tiers for Developer and Business products.
| Feature | Free Tier | Pro Tier ($19/user/month) |
|---|---|---|
| Agentic chat requests | 50 per month | Expanded monthly allowance |
| Inline code suggestions | Included | Included |
| Code transformation | 1,000 lines of code/month | 4,000 lines of code/month (pooled at account level) |
| Overage for transformation | Not available | $0.003 per line of code submitted |
| Security scanning | Manual project scans | Manual + automatic real-time scans |
| Reference tracking | Included | Included |
| IDE and CLI support | Included | Included |
| Admin dashboard | Not included | Included |
| Identity center support | Not included | Included |
| IP indemnity | Not included | Included |
| Access to latest Claude models | Included | Included |
| Feature | Lite ($3/user/month) | Pro ($20/user/month) |
|---|---|---|
| Permission-aware responses | Up to 1 page | Up to 7 pages |
| File insights | Included | Included |
| Browser extension | Included | Included |
| Content creation | Not included | Included |
| Amazon Q Apps | Not included | Included |
| QuickSight integration | Not included | Included (Reader Pro) |
| Third-party plugins | Not included | Included |
| Image processing | Not included | $0.003 per image |
| Slack and Teams integration | Not included | Included |
Additional infrastructure costs apply for index units. A Starter Index costs $0.140 per hour per unit (maximum 5 units) and supports up to 20,000 documents or 200 MB of text in a single Availability Zone. An Enterprise Index costs $0.264 per hour per unit with multi-Availability Zone deployment for production workloads.
Amazon Q Developer competes with several other AI coding assistants in the market.
| Feature | Amazon Q Developer | GitHub Copilot | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developer | AWS | GitHub (Microsoft) | Anthropic |
| Pricing (individual) | Free / $19 per month | Free / $10-39 per month | Usage-based (via API) |
| IDE support | VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Eclipse | VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse | Terminal-based (VS Code integration) |
| Model selection | Automatic routing via Bedrock (not user-selectable) | User-selectable (GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, Gemini) | Claude model family |
| Context window | Varies by routed model | Up to 64,000 tokens | Up to 200,000 tokens |
| Agentic coding | Yes (Q Developer Agent) | Yes (Copilot Workspace) | Yes (autonomous multi-file tasks) |
| Security scanning | Built-in SAST, secrets detection, IaC scanning | Via GitHub Advanced Security (separate product) | Not built-in |
| Code transformation | Java upgrades, .NET modernization, SQL migration | Not included | Not included |
| Cloud integration | Deep AWS integration (console, CloudWatch, IAM) | GitHub ecosystem integration | General-purpose |
| Benchmark (SWE-bench Verified) | 66% (April 2025) | Varies by model | Varies by model |
| IP indemnity | Pro Tier | Business and Enterprise tiers | Not offered |
GitHub Copilot holds roughly 42% market adoption and is used by 90% of Fortune 100 companies, giving it the largest installed base. Amazon Q Developer's primary differentiator is its deep integration with AWS services, making it particularly valuable for teams building on the AWS cloud. Claude Code excels at complex reasoning tasks and large-scale refactoring across multiple files, operating primarily as a terminal-based autonomous agent.
Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that provides access to foundation models from multiple AI companies through a unified API. Amazon Q and Bedrock are complementary but serve different purposes:
Amazon Q Developer uses intelligent model routing through Bedrock to select the optimal foundation model for each task without exposing the selection logic to the end user. This means that as newer and more capable models become available on Bedrock, Amazon Q can incorporate them transparently. AWS has confirmed that Amazon Q leverages Claude models from Anthropic among its routing options.
For organizations that want fine-grained control over model selection, prompt engineering, and AI application behavior, Bedrock is the appropriate choice. For teams that want a turnkey AI assistant integrated into their existing development and business workflows, Amazon Q provides that experience without requiring direct model management.
Amazon Q has received frequent updates since its GA launch. Key milestones include:
Amazon Q is built on Amazon Bedrock with enterprise-grade security controls. Key architectural and security characteristics include:
Amazon Q Developer supports code suggestions and assistance in the following languages:
| Category | Languages |
|---|---|
| General-purpose | Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C, C++, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, Scala |
| Scripting and shell | Bash, PowerShell, shell scripting |
| Query languages | SQL |
| Configuration and IaC | JSON, YAML, HCL (Terraform), CloudFormation, CDK |
| Markup | Markdown, reStructuredText |
For customizations (fine-tuning on internal codebases), support extends to Dart, Go, Kotlin, PHP, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Bash, PowerShell, CloudFormation, and Terraform, in addition to the core languages of Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Markdown, reStructuredText, and plain text.