We’re bringing back the Kiro startup credits program

Founders, we saw a lot of demand for startup credits in December. When we launched the Kiro Startup Credits Program last year, the response was overwhelming. Thousands of you applied and the demand was clear: early-stage teams need developer tools that scale with you as you grow.

So we’re bringing it back. Starting today, eligible startups can apply for up to a year’s worth of Kiro Pro+ at no cost. That means you get to build faster with specs and advanced AI agents without worrying about the bill.

What you get

If you’re an early-stage to Series A startup, you can receive up to one year’s worth of Kiro Pro+ credits, automatically applied to your AWS account. We’ve set up three tiers based on team size:

• Starter tier – up to 2 users

• Growth tier – up to 10 users

• Scale tier – up to 30 users

We review applications on a rolling basis, and reach out via email on your application status. If you exceed your tier’s user limit or upgrade beyond Pro+, additional fees may apply.

Note: If you've already received AWS Activate credits, you’re not eligible for this program.

Why specs matter

Whether your teams prefer coding with AI in an IDE or CLI, jumping straight into code or planning up-front, Kiro helps you bring structure to your AI coding workflows across tools, environments, and teams. We’re championing spec-driven development because we truly believe that structure really increases code quality and minimizes the back-and-forth, reducing your overall development time. Instead of juggling too many tools or spending hours on prompt engineering, Kiro lets you define requirements and ship tested code in minutes. AI agents handle the documentation, testing, and reviews automatically, so you can focus on building what matters.

For founders moving from MVP to product-market fit, this changes everything. You iterate faster, your team stays aligned, and scaling doesn’t slow you down when complexity grows. Velocity stops being a sprint and becomes sustainable progress.

“Kiro has helped scale our developer teams, allowing them to debug faster, increase code quality via test coverage, and quickly create innovative proof of concepts. A key project we estimated would take 24-32 weeks to reach testing was accomplished in just 5-7 weeks. We’re now generating 80% of our Terraform code, unit tests, and Playwright object models with Kiro—it’s saving our platform team 8-12 hours per week and enabling us to build entire MCP servers and agents with 80% AI assistance. That’s transformational for our pace of innovation.” — Matthew Trevathan, SVP Architecture and Innovation, Nymbus

“At CoverTree, building insurance products and infrastructure for housing means dealing with complex rules, edge cases, and real compliance risk if we get things wrong. Being clear about what we’re building and how we build it matters every day. Kiro has helped our team slowdown in the right places and think through requirements before writing code. Since adopting Kiro, we’ve increased our automated test coverage by more than 60% and reduced the time spent writing tests and documentation by roughly 60–70%. Several features that previously took 3–4 weeks to reach a testable state are now ready in days. Kiro is now used across our core engineering workflows, supporting everything from requirement definition to test generation and code review. It has become part of our day-to-day development process, and we’re excited to keep growing alongside their team as the product continues to mature.” — Divyansh Sharma, Co-founder and CTO, CoverTree

How to apply

The program is available globally in most countries. Apply now to unlock a year of building faster with Kiro. See Terms and Conditions.

Share what you’re building with us using hashtag #KiroforStartups or #BuildwithKiro - we’re @kirodotdev on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram, and @kiro.dev on Bluesky!

Looking for more startup resources?

AWS Activate is Amazon Web Services’ dedicated startup program, offering promotional credits, technical support, and business resources to help you build and scale. From compute and machine learning to databases and security, AWS Activate provides the infrastructure and support your startup needs to grow.

Need help? Join the Kiro community on Discord to connect with other builders, share best practices, get technical support, and stay updated on the latest features. Our community is here to help you succeed.