AWS Is Quietly Retiring 20+ Services. The Door Closes July 30. Here's the Full List.
On June 30, AWS published a single low-key announcement — "AWS Service Availability Updates" — that amounts to one of the largest coordinated service retirements AWS has ever made. Around 20 services and features move to maintenance mode and close to new customers on July 30, 2026. Five more enter "sunset," the stage with an actual shutdown date. Two are already gone.
The headline names are not obscure: Amazon Kendra (enterprise search), Amazon Q Business (the AI assistant AWS was heavily promoting eighteen months ago), Bedrock Agents Classic, Cognito Sync, Simple AD, and nine features of SageMaker including Ground Truth and Mechanical Turk-based labeling. If your stack touches AWS's AI tooling, there is a decent chance something you use is on this list.
Three weeks later, coverage remains thin — an announcement dropped on June 30 with a 30-day clock is easy to miss. So here is the whole thing, in plain English, nine days before the door closes.
First, decode the vocabulary
AWS uses three stages, and they mean very different things:
| Stage | What it actually means | Should you worry? |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance mode | Keeps running for existing customers; closed to new customers; no new features. AWS says it "will continue to operate and support these services." | Not today. But this is the on-ramp to retirement — start planning your exit on your own schedule, before AWS sets one for you. |
| Sunset | A shutdown date exists. The service will stop working. | Yes — this is a migration deadline, not a suggestion. |
| End of support | Already off. | If you depended on it, you already know. |
Closing to new customers July 30, 2026 (maintenance mode)
Existing users keep access. New sign-ups end July 30. AWS's recommended destinations, where named, in parentheses (per DevelopersIO's summary of the announcement and AWS's migration docs):
| Service / feature | What it does | AWS's suggested destination |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Kendra | Enterprise search | Bedrock Knowledge Bases |
| Amazon Q Business | Enterprise AI assistant | Amazon Quick |
| Amazon Bedrock Agents Classic | Original Bedrock agent framework | Bedrock AgentCore |
| Amazon Cognito Sync | Cross-device data sync | AppSync + DynamoDB |
| AWS Directory Service — Simple AD | Lightweight directory | AWS Managed Microsoft AD |
| AWS Mainframe Modernization — Self-Managed | Self-managed mainframe migration | — |
| Console myApplications | Console application grouping | — |
| Resource Groups — Group Lifecycle Events | Group change events | — |
| Service Catalog — Application Registry | Application metadata registry | — |
| Systems Manager — Application Manager | Application ops console | — |
| SageMaker AI — nine features | A2I, Clarify, Debugger, GeoSpatial, Ground Truth, Mechanical Turk, Model Monitor, Role Manager, Studio Lab | Varies by feature |
| AWS IoT Device Defender — Detect | IoT anomaly detection | — (closes Aug 31, 2026, one month later) |
Sunset — these have a shutdown date
Reported end of service: June 30, 2027. One year to be off.
| Service | AWS's suggested destination |
|---|---|
| Amazon WorkSpaces — PCoIP protocol | WorkSpaces DCV |
| Amazon WorkSpaces — Pool | WorkSpaces Applications |
| AWS Managed Services (AMS) Advanced | AMS Accelerate |
| AWS re:Post Private | Third-party alternatives |
| SageMaker AI — Profiler | — |
The WorkSpaces PCoIP entry deserves emphasis: virtual desktop fleets are slow-moving infrastructure with real user impact, and a protocol migration across a large WorkSpaces estate is not a quarter-end task. If you run WorkSpaces on PCoIP, the June 2027 date is the one to socialize with management now.
Already gone (as of June 30, 2026)
- Amazon Chime SDK — Carrier Voice Focus
- SageMaker Ground Truth Plus
What this announcement actually tells you
1. AI services now churn like consumer apps. Kendra, Q Business, Bedrock Agents Classic and Ground Truth are all AI offerings, several of them launched or heavily promoted within the last three years. Q Business in particular went from keynote centerpiece to maintenance mode in under two years. The lesson isn't that AWS is careless — it's that the AI platform layer is turning over at a pace enterprise procurement has never had to price in before. We covered the same dynamic in model retirements; it now applies to entire services.
2. "Maintenance mode" is a courtesy window, not a destination. AWS's commitment is to operate and support — not to develop, and not forever. Every service on the maintenance list should be treated as having an unannounced sunset date. Migrating while the service still works and the docs still exist is cheap; migrating after a shutdown date is announced is a fire drill.
3. Cloud lifecycles belong in the same inventory as software versions. Most organizations that track end-of-life software at all track installed software — OS versions, runtimes, databases. Managed-service dependencies rarely make the list, yet they carry the harder deadline. If your architecture depends on Kendra, that dependency has a lifecycle exactly like your Node.js version does — it's just enforced by someone else's shutdown script instead of your patch policy.
The nine-day checklist
- Grep your estate for the list above. IaC repos, service control policies, billing data — Cost Explorer grouped by service is the fastest census of what you actually use.
- If you were evaluating any maintenance-mode service: the decision just made itself. Don't build new on a closing door — start on the successor (Bedrock Knowledge Bases, Quick, AgentCore) instead.
- If you run one in production: nothing breaks July 30 — but open the migration ticket this week while it's news, not in the quarter a sunset date lands.
- If you run WorkSpaces PCoIP or AMS Advanced: you have a real deadline — June 30, 2027 — and a fleet-sized project. Start now.
We track lifecycle deadlines like these across 485 products — check any version in seconds, scan your whole stack, or see what else is reaching end of life this half, all against dates verified against vendor sources.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which AWS services close to new customers on July 30, 2026?
Amazon Kendra, Amazon Q Business, Bedrock Agents Classic, Cognito Sync, Simple AD, Mainframe Modernization Self-Managed, Console myApplications, Resource Groups Group Lifecycle Events, Service Catalog Application Registry, Systems Manager Application Manager, and nine SageMaker AI features. IoT Device Defender Detect follows August 31. Existing customers keep access.
What does maintenance mode mean?
The service keeps running and AWS keeps supporting it for existing customers, but it's closed to new customers and gets no new features. It's the first stage of retirement — plan your migration before a shutdown date gets announced for you.
Which services are being shut down entirely?
WorkSpaces PCoIP, WorkSpaces Pool, AMS Advanced, re:Post Private, and SageMaker Profiler entered sunset, with end dates reported as June 30, 2027. Chime SDK Carrier Voice Focus and SageMaker Ground Truth Plus already ended June 30, 2026.
Where does AWS say to migrate?
Kendra → Bedrock Knowledge Bases; Q Business → Amazon Quick; Bedrock Agents Classic → Bedrock AgentCore; Simple AD → AWS Managed Microsoft AD; Cognito Sync → AppSync + DynamoDB; WorkSpaces PCoIP → WorkSpaces DCV; WorkSpaces Pool → WorkSpaces Applications; AMS Advanced → AMS Accelerate.
Will my existing Kendra / Q Business deployment stop working?
No. Maintenance mode explicitly preserves existing customers, and AWS states it will continue to operate and support these services. What ends July 30 is new-customer access and, in practice, the service's future. Treat it as working-but-terminal.