Kiro's free CLI fixed our bug 3/3 and jumped to #1 (9.7)

Hi, it's Peter from VibeToolRank. Here's what we tested this week.

New test: Kiro (free CLI), 9.7

Kiro fixed our seeded cart bug in all 3 runs on the Free plan, in 17–18 seconds each, and ran the tests itself. Three runs used about 0.8 of the 50 free monthly credits, with no API key, no card and $0 spent. The catch: the docs still say headless use needs a paid-plan API key; on Free it worked once we'd logged in with an AWS Builder ID.

New test: Claude Code with Sonnet 5.5, 9.3

Claude Code on Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5.5 fixed the same bug 3 out of 3 times, in 6–7 seconds each. Real API spend was about $0.01 per run. It loses points only on cost: Claude Code isn't in Claude Free, so you need Pro ($20/mo), Max or API credits.

Also tested: Claude Code on a free model, 9.3

Same CLI, but on a free OpenRouter model (cohere/north-mini-code:free). It also went 3 for 3 at $0, just slower (26–61 seconds per run). Same overall score, different trade-off: free and slower, or about a cent a run and fast.

Comparison: Cursor vs Kiro

Kiro now scores 9.7 to Cursor's 8.4. One honest caveat: Cursor's 8.4 comes from a single run of our todo-app task in October, while Kiro's 9.7 is three runs of the bugfix task this week, so this isn't a head-to-head on one task. Both have a free plan.

Cursor vs Kiro

Ranking change

Kiro went from 8.7 to 9.7, which puts it at #1 among editors (ahead of Cursor 8.4, Devin Desktop 8.1 and GitHub Copilot 8.0) and makes it the highest score on the site right now, ahead of Neon at 9.5.

All editor rankings

New on the radar (not tested yet)

• Memdoor: open-source terminal agent, bring your own key or a local model
• T3 Code: one app to drive Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and others
• ThinkRail: JetBrains' open-source agentic IDE

That's it. Reply with the tool you want tested next. I read every reply.

Peter, VibeToolRank
Rankings are never for sale. One labelled affiliate link (Railway): disclosure.