Millions of students can now get access to a free year of Kiro from AWS

Key takeaways Millions of students at 132 universities across 18 countries can now access a free year of Kiro, no credit card required. The program piloted earlier this year with thousands of students building apps from accessibility to healthcare. Students get the same AI agent that Mondelēz International, Siemens, and Amazon use to ship software.

An AI future requires builders AI is lowering the barrier to building software and redefining how work gets done. More people are moving beyond simply using AI to building with AI, creating personalized workflows that make their days easier and chasing the ideas they’ve always wanted to pursue.

AI is accelerating how people build, but it doesn’t replace the need for people who can think critically, define what needs to exist, and bring it to life. Those people need experience with advanced AI tools, a clear vision for what they want to create, and enough expertise in their field to know when AI gets it right and when it doesn’t.

We are investing in this next generation of builders by putting advanced agentic capabilities in their hands while they are still in school.

Starting today, millions of students at 132 universities across 18 countries can get a full year of free access to Kiro, the AI agent for software engineering, with 1,000 credits a month so they can bring their big ideas to life.

Amazon commits over $70 million in scholarships to students across the US since 2019 Amazon has awarded 200 high school seniors with scholarships of up to $40,000 each, plus a paid internship opportunity at Amazon.

Giving students a head start with AI agents AI agents are now a standard tool for developing software, and students are already experimenting with them. But free tiers only go so far.

With limited access to advanced capabilities, students struggle to catch their stride or quickly hit usage caps from short trials, leaving them with half-finished projects and frustrated.

This isn’t conducive to learning, so we’re giving students Kiro offerings that go beyond a standard free tier: 1,000 credits a month, the latest models, and the zero-install Kiro Web. With this toolkit, students can see projects to completion and stay in flow long enough to actually learn.

This program started as a pilot in March 2026 with 11 universities across two countries. Since then, thousands of students are now building their ideas to life. They created an accessibility app for visually impaired users, and a wellness platform connecting patients to medical professionals through voice activation.

The students behind these projects come from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels, with some even producing their first lines of code. They are all finding their own way to learn, experiment, and create real apps with Kiro. Approaching AI like the pros The solutions students built didn’t come together by simply having a capable tool.

Students were more intentional about critical and creative thinking, and about using best practices for building with AI. With Kiro, students learn the same spec-driven development technique that teams at Mondelēz International (the snack company behind Oreo), Siemens, Amazon, and many other organizations use to build software.

Students collaborate with Kiro to map out what they want to create, including requirements, design decisions, and implementation steps. They then look for gaps in their thinking, generate code, and confirm that the outputs match the spec.

Because Kiro handles repetitive execution, students get more meaningful cycles of thinking like professional builders—breaking down complex problems, defining what good looks like, and steering agents toward a goal—all before entering the workforce.

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Building what comes next The best software of the next decade will come from people who grew up building alongside agents as part of their creative process.

Students from the Kiro program are already redefining what they can accomplish with AI before their first job, and students not yet part of the program keep asking for it at their school so they can do the same. This is our answer.

For today’s rollout, we’re scaling university availability by 12 times from our initial pilot—expanding beyond North America to Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. We’ll keep going. We can’t wait to see what students build. See if you’re eligible and sign up on the Kiro for students program page. Dive deeper with the Kiro technical blog.

Participating schools Asia Pacific Indonesia Binus University Japan Kobe University Malaysia Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation Singapore Institute of Technical Education Nanyang Polytechnic Nanyang Technological University National Institute of Education National University of Singapore Ngee Ann Polytechnic Republi