Introducing the Kiro Students tier

Students are the future decision-makers shaping the world we are all going to live in. That belief is at the core of everything we are announcing today. We want to put serious tools in your hands while you are still learning, experimenting, and figuring out what you want to build.

Starting today, we are launching the Kiro Students tier: one full year of free access to Kiro with 1,000 credits per month for eligible university students. No credit card. No trial timer. Just build.

Today’s launch

We are kicking things off with 11 universities:

Arizona State University (ASU)
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO)
California State University, Fullerton (Cal State Fullerton)
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)
Hampton University
New York University (NYU)
University of Chicago (UChicago)
University of Toronto
University of Waterloo
University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

This is just the beginning. We are working to expand to more universities soon. If your school is not on the list yet, you can request it.

Getting started takes just a few steps:

Sign up or log in. Use your university-affiliated email to create a Kiro account using AWS Builder ID. If you already have a Kiro account, make sure your university-affiliated email is associated with it before proceeding.
Verify your student status. After signing in, if you are a student at an eligible university, you will see a "You are eligible for Kiro Students" banner in your account page. Click the verify button and complete a quick verification through SheerID. It only takes a minute.
Start building. Once verified, you will have immediate access to 1,000 credits per month for one full year.

That’s it. No lengthy application. No waiting period.

A few things to note

One-time verification. You can only verify your student status once, so make sure your information is correct.
No overages. If you hit your 1,000 credit limit for the month, you will need to wait until the next cycle. Credits do not roll over.
After one year ends. Once your one-year access expires, your account will be automatically downgraded to the Kiro free plan.

Why we are doing this

We believe the best time to get comfortable with professional-grade tools is while you still have the freedom to explore, break things, and learn without pressure. AI agents are quickly becoming part of the standard engineering toolkit, and we want students to have real access to them.

The Kiro Students tier gives you the same caliber of tooling that professional engineering teams use every day. That means when you are ready to enter the workforce, these tools already feel natural.

And if you are one of the growing number of students leaning toward entrepreneurship, this is for you, too. Kiro’s spec-driven development lets you go from a napkin idea to a working prototype fast. Start with a simple prompt, and Kiro generates the requirements, architecture, and a sequenced implementation plan for you. From there, you iterate and ship.

Class project, hackathon, startup MVP, whatever you are building, Kiro has you covered.

Why Kiro

Most AI coding tools are great at generating code from a prompt. But planning when working with agents has become paramount to get good results. Kiro does both. It brings structure to the process that makes you a better builder along the way.

With spec-driven development, you do not need to know what the requirements are or how you would go about building something. Just describe what you want, and Kiro breaks it down into clear requirements, designs, and sequenced tasks. That process teaches you one of the most important skills there is: decomposing big, intimidating problems into small, manageable steps. Do it enough times and it becomes second nature. You are not just shipping code. You are building structured thinking that will serve you in every role you take on.

When you just want to move fast without the upfront planning, Kiro’s vibe coding has you covered. Sometimes you need structure, sometimes you need speed. Move seamlessly between both.

Kiro also works wherever you do. Beyond the IDE, Kiro’s CLI brings the same agentic capabilities straight to your terminal, perfect for quick iterations, scripting, or when you just prefer the command line.

On top of that, agent hooks automate the stuff you forget or dread (updating tests, syncing docs), steering files let you set coding standards per project, and native MCP support connects you to databases, APIs, and more without leaving the IDE.

“Students are not just the builders of the future. They are the builders of right now. Kiro is a tool for building, but it is also a tool for thinking: for research, for exploring ideas, for turning curiosity into something real. I cannot wait to see what our student developers create.” — Deepak Singh, VP of Kiro

Whether you are learning a new framework, building a capstone, exploring a new idea at 2 AM, Kiro helps you build better and learn faster.

On campus

We are bringing Kiro directly to campus. Join the Kiro Student Discord Community to stay in the loop on campus visits, workshops, and hackathons we will be hosting at select schools. We will share dates and details there first.

Want to co-host a hackathon with Kiro at your school? Let us know in the Discord. We would love to partner with you.

Get started

Head to kiro.dev/students to learn more and sign up. Share what you’re building with #KiroStudents - we’re @kirodotdev on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and @kiro.dev on Bluesky.

We can’t wait to see what you build.