The helicopter was unveiled at the 2013 Paris Airshow on June 17, 2013, as the Bell SLS (Short Light Single).

[5] Main production started in 2016[5] in an 82,300-square-foot (7,646 m2), $26.3 million hangar facility at Lafayette Regional Airport in Louisiana,[11] but the tooling was created for assembly in different places in the world.

[8] Louisiana offered $8 million in support for 250 new jobs,[11] and started construction of the factory in August 2014 which was then leased to Bell.

The Lafayette Assembly Center, which was specifically designed to manufacture and deliver the 505, will instead complete Bell 525 sub-assemblies and perform work on Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout UAVs.

[23] The first customer aircraft was delivered on March 7, 2017, to a private operator in Arizona, United States.

[24] The Bell 505 has become a military training helicopter for several countries by 2023, including South Korea, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, UAE, Montenegro, and Jordan.