AI Coding Tools Pricing - June 2026

What Changed Since April

Three headline changes hit the AI coding tools market between April and June 2026.

GitHub Copilot switched from a premium-request count to usage-based GitHub AI Credits on June 1. Code completions are now permanently free on all paid plans. Chat queries, agent mode sessions, code reviews, and Copilot CLI calls now draw from a monthly credit pool where 1 AI Credit equals $0.01. The Pro plan at $10/month now includes 1,500 credits ($15 value) instead of 300 premium requests. A new Max tier at $100/month includes 20,000 credits ($200 value). Developers who use Copilot mainly for completions came out ahead. Those running long agentic workflows saw costs rise sharply - the developer backlash was immediate.

Windsurf no longer exists as a standalone product. On June 2, Cognition pushed an over-the-air update that rebranded the IDE to Devin Desktop. The $250 million acquisition, announced in December 2025, is fully integrated. Plans and pricing carried over unchanged for existing subscribers. What changed is the product story: Devin Cloud, previously a separate metered autonomous agent service, is now bundled into the $20/month Pro plan.

Amazon Q Developer closed new signups on May 15. AWS is officially winding it down, replacing it with Kiro, with full end-of-life on April 30, 2027. The latest frontier models (including Claude Opus 4.7) became Kiro-exclusive on May 29, further pushing existing Q Developer teams toward migration. Kiro added a Pro Max tier ($100/month, 5,000 credits) to fill the gap between Pro+ and Power.

Individual Plan Pricing

All prices USD per month. Effective June 15, 2026.

Team Plans

For hands-on assessments see the reviews of GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf), Claude Code, Augment Cosmos, and Devin. For direct tool comparisons see Copilot vs Cursor and Cursor vs Devin Desktop.

GitHub Copilot's New Credit System - What It Actually Means

GitHub's June 1 billing change replaces the premium-request model with AI Credits, metered by token consumption and model choice. Source: github.blog

The mechanics matter here. Under the old system, using Claude Opus 4.7 in Copilot chat consumed one premium request - same as using a smaller model. Under AI Credits, each session is priced by token count and model. A long Claude Opus session costs significantly more credits than the same session on GPT-5 mini. Model selection now directly affects your monthly spend in a way it didn't before.

Business accounts get 1,900 credits per user per month, with a promotional bonus of 3,000 additional credits through September 2026. Enterprise accounts get 3,900 credits per user with a 7,000-credit bonus through September. Both tiers let organizations pool credits across the team and set per-user budget caps. Admins can hard-cap usage at the monthly allowance or allow overages at $0.01 per additional credit.

For solo developers doing routine completions and light chat, Pro at $10/month holds up as strong value. The 1,500 included credits handle typical query volumes well. The profile that gets hurt is the developer running heavy agent sessions: reading large codebases, making multi-file edits, iterating across test runs. Those sessions burn credits fast on frontier models. If you're running more than a handful of substantial agent tasks daily, assess Pro+ at $39/month (7,000 credits) or the new Max tier at $100/month (20,000 credits) against your actual usage before the next billing cycle.

One control worth finding right away: GitHub's budget settings. Under the new model, admins can set a credit cap that prevents any spending beyond the monthly allowance. Without it, overages accrue automatically.

Windsurf Is Now Devin Desktop

Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) shipped as an over-the-air update on June 2. The Agent Command Center, shown here, is now the default landing view. Source: devin.ai

Cognition acquired Windsurf from Codeium for about $250 million in December 2025. The rebranding to Devin Desktop arrived as a routine over-the-air update on June 2. Existing subscribers opened the IDE and found it renamed, with the Agent Command Center - a Kanban board for managing local and cloud agent sessions - as the new default view.

The Agent Command Center is the most visible change. From one panel, developers can monitor local agents (running on their machine), Devin Cloud sessions, and any third-party agent using the open Agent Client Protocol (ACP). At launch, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, and OpenCode run inside Devin Desktop as ACP-compatible agents. If you want to run the same task through multiple agents and compare results without switching editors, that's now possible in a single window.

For pricing, the consolidation matters. The old Devin autonomous agent service charged $20/month for platform access plus $2.25 per ACU (roughly 15 minutes of agent work). At the new Pro tier ($20/month), Devin Cloud access is bundled in. Light agent users who previously paid $20 base plus ACU overages should see lower effective bills. Teams running large autonomous workloads should assess the Max plan ($200/month) against their actual session counts. The daily quota model from March 2026 is still in place: hitting your daily allowance stops your session until the reset.

See the Cursor vs Devin Desktop comparison for performance-level detail on how the two tools differ after the acquisition.

Amazon Q Developer Is Being Retired

AWS closed new Amazon Q Developer signups on May 15 and announced full end-of-life for April 30, 2027. The product is being retired for Kiro.

The two tools aren't structurally equivalent. Q Developer was a plugin for your existing IDE with inline suggestions and a chat panel. Kiro is a standalone VS Code-based IDE with spec-driven workflows: before executing a task, Kiro turns requirements into formal design documents and task lists. Existing VS Code extensions, keybindings, and Open VSX-compatible plugins carry over without reinstallation, so the migration cost is lower than switching to a new IDE from scratch.

Kiro now has five tiers: Free (50 credits), Pro ($20/month, 1,000 credits), Pro+ ($40/month, 2,000 credits), Pro Max ($100/month, 5,000 credits), and Power ($200/month, 10,000 credits). The Pro Max tier was added after the initial GA launch and addresses a gap for teams doing moderate spec-driven development. Overages across all tiers are $0.04 per credit. New users receive 500 bonus credits on signup, valid for 30 days.

OpenAI Codex CLI

OpenAI's Codex CLI is included in every ChatGPT subscription, including Free. There's no separate Codex subscription to buy. The CLI draws from the same usage limits as Codex web and IDE - the free tier is truly limited, while Plus ($20/month) and Pro ($100-200/month) give it room to breathe.

The API route is separate: gpt-5.3-codex at $1.75/M input and $14/M output puts it in mid-tier territory. For developers building custom tooling on top of Codex, see Claude Code vs Cursor vs Codex and the Codex vs Claude Code direct comparison.

Hidden Costs

GitHub Copilot Overage Risk

Under the old system, running out of premium requests meant the tool fell back to a slower model. Under AI Credits, running out means either hitting a hard cap (if your admin set one) or being billed $0.01 per additional credit. Teams without budget controls configured could face unexpected charges from long agent sessions. The first thing any engineering manager should do after the June 1 transition is set an organization-level credit cap.

Kiro Spec Mode Multiplier

Kiro's credit consumption scales with task type. Spec-mode tasks, which generate formal requirements and design documents before writing code, consume roughly 5x more credits than basic vibe-mode prompts. On the Pro plan at 1,000 credits per month, a team doing multiple daily spec-mode sessions will exhaust their allowance well before month end. The Pro Max tier ($100/month, 5,000 credits) was added specifically to address this use case. Overage credits at $0.04 each add up quickly on heavy spec-mode workflows.

Devin Desktop Daily Quota Lockouts

The daily and weekly quota reset model has been in place since March 2026 and carries into the Devin Desktop era. Hitting your daily allowance stops your session until midnight reset. On the Max plan ($200/month), the daily cap is clearly higher, but it still exists. Developers doing intensive late-day sprints or debugging marathons should understand their plan's daily ceiling before committing to it.

API Costs for BYO-Key Tools

Cline and Aider have no subscription cost, but running Claude Sonnet 4.6 through Cline for a full coding day usually runs $5-15 in API tokens. Claude Opus 4.7 sessions cost $20-50 per day for intensive use. Monthly totals of $200-600 are common among power users. The advantage is full cost visibility: every token is itemized. For more on open-source coding tools, see the best AI coding CLI tools comparison.

Free Tier Comparison

Cline's free tier remains the strongest available - the complete tool with no artificial caps, limited only by your API spend. GitHub Copilot Free improved materially in the June update: completions are now permanently uncapped on the free tier (previously limited to 2,000/month), and the 50 AI credit requests handle light chat needs without a subscription.

Price History

• Jun 2026 - GitHub Copilot switches to GitHub AI Credits billing. Completions and Next Edit Suggestions made free on all paid plans. New Max tier at $100/month (20,000 credits). Pro now includes 1,500 credits, Pro+ includes 7,000 credits. Annual subscribers retain old pricing until renewal.

• Jun 2026 - Windsurf rebrands to Devin Desktop. Devin Cloud agent bundled into Pro plan at no extra cost. Agent Command Center becomes the default IDE view. ACP protocol adds support for third-party agents including Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.

• May 2026 - Amazon Q Developer closes new signups. Kiro adds Pro Max tier ($100/month, 5,000 credits). Latest frontier models become Kiro-exclusive.

• Mar 2026 - Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) replaced its credit system with daily and weekly usage quotas across Free, Pro ($20/mo), Max ($200/mo), and Teams ($40/user/mo) plans.

• Mar 2026 - Replit dropped Core plan from $25 to $20/month (annual) and launched Pro at $100/month with tiered credits and rollover.

• Mar 2026 - Amazon Kiro launched for general availability with Free (50 credits), Pro ($20/1,000 credits), Pro+ ($40/2,000 credits), and Power ($200/10,000 credits) tiers.

• Feb 2026 - GitHub Copilot introduced the premium-request model (since retired). Pro at 300/month, Pro+ at 1,500/month, with $0.04 per additional request.

• Jan 2026 - Cognition dropped Devin from $500-only entry to a $20/month Core plan, opening individual access for the first time.

FAQ

Which AI coding tool is cheapest?

Cline and Aider are free and open-source; your only cost is API tokens. For subscriptions, GitHub Copilot Pro at $10/month is the cheapest paid option. Code completions are free on all paid Copilot plans after the June 2026 change.

What happened to Windsurf?

Cognition bought Windsurf for roughly $250 million in December 2025. On June 2, 2026, the IDE was rebranded Devin Desktop via an over-the-air update. Plans and pricing are unchanged; Devin Cloud agent access is now bundled into the $20/month Pro plan.

Is GitHub Copilot's new credit billing better or worse?

It depends on your usage pattern. Completion-heavy developers benefit - completions are now free. Developers running long chat sessions or agentic workflows on frontier models will see higher bills. Audit your monthly session count and model choice before assuming the new model is equivalent to what you paid before.

What replaces Amazon Q Developer?

Kiro is AWS's designated replacement. It's a standalone VS Code-based IDE (not a plugin) with spec-driven agentic workflows. New Q Developer signups closed May 15, 2026; full EOL is April 30, 2027. Kiro's five tiers run from Free through Power ($200/month).

How do Kiro credits work?

Each credit is worth $0.01 in AI compute. Spec-mode tasks (structured feature development with design docs and task lists) consume roughly 5x more credits than basic vibe-mode prompts. Credits don't roll over month to month. Overages are $0.04 per credit and must be manually enabled.

Should I use BYO-key tools or subscriptions?

BYO-key tools (Cline, Aider) give full model choice and cost transparency at the expense of setup overhead. If you're already spending more than $40/month on API tokens for coding, a $20/month subscription tier may cost less. Below that threshold, BYO-key wins on cost alone.

Sources:

• GitHub Copilot Plans
• GitHub Copilot Moving to Usage-Based Billing
• GitHub Copilot Billing Updates Changelog
• Cursor Pricing
• Devin Pricing
• Windsurf Is Now Devin Desktop
• Cognition's Acquisition of Windsurf
• Kiro Pricing
• Amazon Q Developer End-of-Support
• Claude Pricing
• Cline Pricing
• Augment Code Pricing
• Replit Pricing