How to choose between Amazon Q Developer and GitHub Copilot
Choose between Amazon Q Developer and GitHub Copilot by the editor people already open, who reviews a diff, and who approves a command. AWS’s current IDE page says support for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins ends on 30 April 2027. Neither set of docs ranks the two.
On this page
Start from the editor already open
Note which editor people already open, where a diff is reviewed, and who may approve a terminal command. Leave those three unwritten and it is too early to compare the products.
If the team already delivers through Custom software, websites, and applications, the plugin has to leave its diff in the review you already run. Cursor and Copilot are covered in How to choose between Cursor and GitHub Copilot. JetBrains and Copilot are covered in How to choose between JetBrains AI Assistant and GitHub Copilot. This note covers Amazon Q Developer and GitHub Copilot in the IDE.
What the Amazon Q pages say
The current page What is Amazon Q Developer describes it as a generative AI conversational assistant that helps you understand, build, extend, and operate AWS applications. In an IDE, the page says it can chat about code, offer inline completions, generate code, scan for security vulnerabilities, and make upgrades such as language updates, debugging, and optimizations. IDE sign-in can use an AWS Builder ID, and the page says no AWS account is required. The same page says a Free tier and a Pro subscription exist and points to a pricing page. This note does not quote prices. The page also says Amazon Q Developer is built on Amazon Bedrock. This note does not compare models. The page shows no separate publish date.
That page and Using Amazon Q Developer in the IDE both say that on 30 April 2027 AWS will discontinue support for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins. The notice points readers to Kiro for the agentic coding, chat, and MCP support the page names. The notice has no separate publish date. The date is the 30 April 2027 written in the notice.
Which IDE features the table lists
The current IDE page’s table marks Chat, agentic coding, MCP, context in chat, workspace context, and inline suggestions as available in VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse, and Visual Studio. Inline chat is marked unavailable in Visual Studio. Transformations are marked unavailable in Eclipse. The page shows no publish date. One row in the table has no feature name. This note does not invent a name for that row.
The passages cited here do not state a product rule that every terminal command waits for a person. Command approval stays a rule the team writes. A command that installs a dependency, pushes to a remote, changes a database, or deletes files stops for a person. How to draw the directories is covered in How to connect an AI coding tool to an existing codebase.
Copilot agent mode in the IDE
The current page on agent mode in the IDE says agent mode takes a high-level task, decides which files to change, edits them, and runs commands until the task is done. You review the changes, and by default you approve commands before they run. An administrator or an editor setting may allow some commands to run on their own. The page lists Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, and Eclipse. If Agent is missing from the menu, an administrator may have turned the mode off. Each prompt consumes GitHub AI Credits. This note does not quote a price for credits. The page shows no publish date.
The same page says that when a task is large or ambiguous you can draft an implementation plan first, and it points to plan mode. The page also has a step for choosing a model. This note does not compare models. How autocomplete and an agent split a task is covered in What is the difference between an AI coding agent and autocomplete.
Differences the two pages actually state
Copilot’s agent-mode page includes Xcode in the list of editors. Amazon Q’s IDE table lists VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse, and Visual Studio, and the table does not list Xcode. That is a difference between two current lists. Neither page shows a publish date.
Amazon Q’s “what is” page describes the IDE and also questions asked in the AWS Management Console, on the documentation site, and in chat applications. Copilot’s agent-mode page describes edits, commands, and review inside the IDE. When the daily work is questions about AWS resources in the console, read the Amazon Q page first. When the daily work is editing in one of those IDEs and approving commands, read the Copilot agent-mode page first. This note does not call either page the better description.
Choose from the workflow you already run
When the team still needs the same IDE plugin after 30 April 2027, read the AWS end-of-support notice before you make a short list. The notice says support for the IDE plugins ends on that date. Write the date into the adoption note, and name who will reread the official page and which still-supported path they will move to. This note does not add migration steps the notice does not contain.
When the editor is already on Copilot’s list, and review and command approval are written down, keep Copilot’s default: approve the command, then let it run. When the editor is on Amazon Q’s table, and the adoption window ends before that discontinuation date, check the table for Chat, agentic coding, and inline suggestions in that IDE, and write the team’s own command rule beside it.
When to leave the choice for later
When support has to last past 30 April 2027, and the adoption note still does not say how the IDE plugin will be replaced, leave Amazon Q’s IDE plugin off as a long-term standard. Write the date and the owner first.
When the reviewer and the command-approval rule are still unwritten, leave Copilot agent mode off a repository that can change the main branch as well. This note does not compare speed, defects, or licence cost. Until you have your own review record, check the choice by whether the editor is the one people already open, whether the end-of-support date is in the record, and whether commands were approved under the rule.