Use Amazon CodeWhisperer for free

Amazon CodeWhisperer is a Generative AI powered coding companion. It is very exciting to see that Amazon CodeWhisperer is now generally available and FREE for individual use!

As an individual user, you get unlimited number for code suggestions and 50 code security scan each month. Comparing to GitHub Copilot $10/month for individual, this is free lunch!

Amazon CodeWhispered Plan

GitHub Copilot Plan

I have set it up in my VScode IDE, and here is the quick how-to:

• Go to https://profile.aws.amazon.com/ to apply for AWS Builder ID if you don’t have one (it is free).

• Install AWS Toolkit for VSCode if you have not installed it before.

• Setup connection in CodeWhisperer with your AWS Builder ID. Now you can start to use it – Open a source code file, then you start the Auto-Suggestions or run the Security Scans.

Writing meaningful comments helps to create more accurate codes, For example, I only typed the comment “# uplode object to s3 bucket” and the start of a function “def upload_to_s3”, then CodeWhispered suggested the rest.

I used tab key to accept the suggestion, then this is how it looks now. Somehow it missed “from botocore.exceptions import ClientError” which is not a big deal, as it has already have provided a good starting point for me to continue. (FYI – use arrow key to choose if there are multiple suggestions, or use esc to deny the suggestion).

It is worth mentioning that as an individual if you don’t want to share your contents with CodeWhisperer for service improvement, then make sure you uncheck the following option in the AWS Toolkit extension.