Kiro Startup Credits: Up to 1 Year of Kiro Pro+ Free for Startups (Apply by Dec 31, 2026)

Short answer: Early-stage to Series A startups can get up to a year of Kiro Pro+ free for up to 30 developers, worth up to $14,400 at list price. Apply with an AWS account that uses your company email before December 31, 2026. You can't hold active AWS Activate credits at the same time, and startup credits only work when your team signs in to Kiro through AWS IAM Identity Center.

What Kiro is

Kiro is AWS's agentic development environment. It turns prompts into code, structured specs and implementation tasks, and is available as an IDE, a CLI, a web app and more. It uses "Auto", a mix of frontier and specialized models, by default, and paid plans can also pick specific models; Kiro's pricing page lists Anthropic Claude models (including Opus 5 and Sonnet 5), OpenAI GPT-5.6 models and open-weight models such as DeepSeek 3.2 and Qwen3 Coder Next. Not every premium model is available in every country.

Tiers and what they're worth

The dollar figures use Kiro's published list price for Pro+ ($40 per user per month, 2,000 credits per user per month). AWS describes the award as "up to one year's worth" of Pro+, and the terms say the amount depends on the tier selected, so treat these as maximums and confirm the actual balance in your AWS account.

What a Kiro credit is

Kiro measures work in credits. Kiro says a simple prompt can use less than one credit, while executing a spec task usually costs more, and different models consume credits at different rates; for example, a task costing X credits in Auto costs 1.3X with Sonnet 4.6. Credits are metered to two decimal places. Monthly plan allowances reset each billing month and don't roll over.

Who qualifies

• Stage: early-stage to Series A startups.
• Age: the person applying must be 18 or older.
• AWS account: you need an AWS Account ID. The email used to create it must match your AWS primary development account and must be on your startup's website domain.
• No active Activate credits: startups currently holding AWS Activate credits aren't eligible.
• Once only: a startup can receive Kiro credits only once, and only one application is considered at a time. Rejected applicants can reapply if their eligibility changes.
• Location: supported in most places where AWS billing is available, with the exclusions listed below.

Excluded countries and regions

The terms exclude individuals living in Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, China/GCR, Cuba, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Mexico, North Korea, Poland, Russia, Spain, Syria, Crimea, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) regions, and the United Arab Emirates. Several large EU markets are on the list, so founders in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland should look at other routes.

How to apply and start using the credits

1. Prepare your AWS account. If you're new to AWS, create an account with your company email. Creating an AWS account requires a payment method, and that card is billed if you go past your credits.
2. Pick a tier that matches the number of developers who will use Kiro in the next year: Starter (2), Growth (10) or Scale (30). Going over the user count can trigger charges.
3. Apply at aws.amazon.com/startups/credits/kiro while signed in to your AWS account, and submit the form.
4. Wait for the email. Review is rolling, and AWS sends the decision to the email address on your AWS account. No processing time is published.
5. Credits land automatically. On approval, credits are deposited into the AWS Account ID you provided and activate immediately; the one-year expiry starts then.
6. Set up AWS IAM Identity Center for your team, then have each developer sign in to Kiro using those credentials (Kiro's enterprise sign-in). Credits aren't available through Builder ID or GitHub and Google logins.
7. Track usage in your AWS account; Kiro also shows each user's monthly credit usage in its subscription dashboard.

Because credits activate on deposit and expire one year later, apply when your team is ready to use Kiro. There is no way to pause or delay activation.

After the credits: costs and plan options

When the credits are used up, the AWS account switches automatically to standard Kiro Pro+ billing, charged monthly to the card on the AWS account. Kiro's published plans are:

Extra usage costs $0.04 per credit. For enterprise sign-ins, admins can enable overages, which are off by default and billed at month-end. Prices exclude taxes, and Kiro says pricing in AWS GovCloud (US) is about 20% higher. The free tier isn't available on enterprise sign-in.

Worked example: a 10-person team on the Growth tier that keeps Pro+ after year one pays 10 × $40 = $400 a month. If the team uses 23,000 credits in a month against a 20,000 allowance and overages are enabled, the extra 3,000 credits add 3,000 × $0.04 = $120.

Kiro credits versus AWS Activate

The two offers are deliberately sequential. AWS's credits page says to "start with Kiro Startup Credits, then grow into Activate Credits." Activate credits can be spent on Kiro, but holding them makes you ineligible for this promotion, while receiving Kiro credits does not stop you applying to AWS Activate later. If you're about to apply for Activate and also want Kiro, apply for Kiro first.

How it compares with other AI coding tools

Most AI coding tools don't run a startup program like this. Compare list prices on our Cursor pricing, GitHub Copilot pricing and Claude Code pricing pages. Students can look at GitHub Copilot for students; the Cursor student discount closed to new sign-ups in June 2026. For model APIs to build your product rather than to write code, see our guide to free AI credits.

Choosing the right tier

Pick the tier for the number of people who will actually use Kiro over the next 12 months, not your total headcount. Kiro's FAQ says that if you exceed your tier's user count you may be charged additional fees, and you can only receive these credits once, so applying for Starter and then asking to move up later is not an option described in the terms. A two-founder team that expects to hire three engineers within a few months is better served by Growth (up to 10 users) than Starter. Each developer needs their own seat; Kiro's pricing FAQ says subscriptions can't be shared within a team.

Also think about how your team signs in. Startup credits require AWS IAM Identity Center, which is Kiro's enterprise sign-in. Developers who already use Kiro with a personal Builder ID or a GitHub or Google login will need to switch to the Identity Center account to draw on the startup credits, and the $20 first-upgrade bonus Kiro gives to Builder ID and social-login users doesn't apply on Identity Center.

Rules worth knowing

• Credits are issued to the startup, not to individuals, and can be shared by authorized users of associated accounts in the same company.
• Credits can't be refunded, re-issued, transferred or sold, and the offer is limited to one subscription per startup.
• Choosing a plan above Pro+ or exceeding your tier's user count may lead to extra charges.
• Kiro doesn't allow subscriptions to be used through third-party automation harnesses that route requests outside Kiro's own interfaces.
• AWS can modify or cancel the offer at any time.