There's a new player in the AI coding space that's causing quite a stir, and it's not who you'd expect.
Kiro, backed by what appears to be an Amazon-Anthropic partnership, is making waves with its thoughtful approach to code generation and it's completely free while in preview.
TLDR:
- Kiro's thoughtful code generation approach and free Claude 4 access show real promise
- Server instability and performance issues make it feel like the preview tool it is
- Better than free alternatives but not ready to replace your daily driver yet
The Good: When It Works, It Really Works
I threw my toughest bug at Kiro, the one that's stumped everything from Cursor to Claude Code. While it didn't completely solve it, Kiro got closer than anything else I've tried. That's saying something.
What sets Kiro apart is its methodology.
Unlike other tools that jump straight into code generation, Kiro takes a breath. It carefully analyzes your codebase, develops a thoughtful plan, and only then starts writing code. Think of it as having Claude Code's planning mode permanently built-in. This deliberate approach seems to yield better results, even if it takes longer.
The tool comes with full access to Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude 3.7, which makes sense given Anthropic's partnership with Amazon. For a free tool, that's impressive firepower.
The Reality Check: Growing Pains Are Real
But here's where the honeymoon phase ends. After about a day of solid performance, Kiro started buckling under demand. The dreaded "high volume of traffic" message became a constant companion, and switching models or retrying sends you back to square one. It's the kind of friction that makes you want to throw your laptop out the window.
The performance issues run deeper than just server load. Kiro is noticeably slower than both Cursor and Claude Code - roughly 2x slower than Cursor and 4x slower than Claude Code by my completely unscientific assessment. Whether this is a deliberate throttling to manage costs during the free preview or a fundamental performance issue remains to be seen.
The Technical Details That Matter
On Windows, Kiro defaults to PowerShell for CLI interactions, which frankly sucks.
Commands fail regularly, and it's a step backward from Claude Code's sensible Bash approach. The UI is polished and less buggy than Cursor (kudos to the AWS backing), but it lacks some of the transparency features developers love—like Cursor's gray text that shows the AI's thinking process.
At its core, Kiro is still Claude, so you get the familiar problem analysis and that slightly euphoric feedback when things work (or don't work in a way Claude thinks is totally fine). It's not revolutionary in terms of the underlying intelligence, but the execution feels more mature.
The Bigger Picture
Kiro's timing couldn't be better - or worse, depending on your perspective. Just as Cursor announces new pricing structures, here comes a free alternative that's actually competitive.
If Amazon can keep the price point aggressive and solve the performance issues (which likely just needs more money thrown at servers), this could genuinely be the "Cursor killer" everyone's talking about.
The caveat? I focused primarily on bug-fixing rather than exploring Kiro's design-time innovations. The real test will be how it handles greenfield projects and its promised specification features.
The Verdict
Download it while it's free, but temper your expectations. Kiro shows genuine promise with its thoughtful approach to code generation and impressive model access. The UI is solid, the methodology is sound, and when it works, it's genuinely helpful.
But the performance issues, server instability, and missing features make it tough to recommend for serious daily use right now. It's a preview tool behaving like a preview tool, promising but not quite ready for prime time.
Still, this is worlds better than the current free alternative (looking at you, Gemini-CLI), and if Amazon can iron out the kinks, they might just have something special here. The pressure is certainly on Cursor to justify their pricing in this new landscape.
Have you tried Kiro? How's it working for your workflow? The early adopter community would love to hear your experiences.
