---
title: Devin
slug: devin
url: "https://toolweight.com/options/devin"
homepage: "https://devin.ai"
categories: coding-agents
last_verified: 2026-01-15
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# Devin

> Fully delegated cloud engineer: file a task in Slack or the web app, get a PR back.

Devin is the purest cloud-delegate on this page, there is no local client. You describe a task in Slack or the web app and it works in its own VM with a shell, editor and browser, then opens a pull request. That model suits well-specified, self-contained tickets and suits nothing else. Pricing is ACU-based with a low entry plan, and the underlying models are Cognition's business rather than yours.

## Identity

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Name | Devin |
| Company | Cognition |
| One-liner | Fully delegated cloud engineer: file a task in Slack or the web app, get a PR back. |
| Site | https://devin.ai |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Funding | Series C+ |
| Open source | No |
| Licence | Proprietary |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Coding agents](https://toolweight.com/compare/coding-agents)
Ranked **#16 of 17** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Surface | web, cloud delegate | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://devin.ai | Web app plus Slack; there is no local client. |
| Default model | Undisclosed, Cognition-hosted, including in-house SWE models | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Model breadth | no model choice | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Repo indexing | hybrid index + agentic | Community-reported | - | - | Maintains its own repo understanding across sessions; the mechanism is not published. |
| Plan mode | ● | Community-reported | - | - | Produces a plan you can edit before it starts. |
| Checkpoint & undo | ○ | Inferred | - | - | Work happens in its VM; your recourse is the pull request diff. |
| Headless / CI | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | An API exists for dispatching sessions; that is delegation, not a CI binary. |
| Local models | ○ | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Where it stops | 4 | Inferred | - | - | Opens a pull request and responds to review comments. Merging stays yours. |
| MCP | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Subagents | ○ | Inferred | - | - | It runs several independent sessions in parallel, which is concurrency rather than delegation. This column asks whether the agent spawns child agents with their own context and collects their results, and parallel sessions do not report back into a parent. |
| Hooks | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Skills / commands | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | Persistent knowledge and playbooks rather than repo-checked commands. |
| Background agents | ● | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | Everything is a background agent, that is the product. |
| Opens PRs | ● | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Permissions | vendor-hosted sandbox | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | Its own VM with shell, editor and browser: strong isolation from your machine, no visibility into the boundary. |
| BYOK | ○ | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Licence | proprietary | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Pricing model | opaque credits | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://devin.ai/pricing | Priced in ACUs; the tokens-per-ACU relationship is not published. |
| Entry price | $20 /seat/mo | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://devin.ai/pricing | Entry plan; real usage on non-trivial tasks runs well above this. |
| Token markup | ● | Inferred | - | - | - |
| GitHub stars | - | Unknown | - | - | Closed source. |
| Terminal-Bench | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Bench model | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Positioning | An AI software engineer you delegate tickets to. | Vendor-claimed | - | https://devin.ai | - |
| First release | 2024-03-12 | Community-reported | - | - | Announced March 2024; general availability December 2024. |

**Verdict.** The clearest expression of full delegation: no local client, no model picker, a pull request or nothing. A real fit for well-specified tickets on a repo with good tests, and a poor one for anything exploratory. ACU pricing means you learn the cost afterwards.

## Alternatives

- [Aider](https://toolweight.com/options/aider), Minimal terminal pair-programmer with a tree-sitter repo map and automatic git commits.
- [Amp](https://toolweight.com/options/amp), Sourcegraph's opinionated agent with no model picker and an ad-supported free tier.
- [Claude Code](https://toolweight.com/options/claude-code), Anthropic's terminal-first agent, with IDE, web and GitHub Action surfaces.
- [Cline](https://toolweight.com/options/cline), Open-source VS Code and JetBrains agent built around an explicit plan/act split.
- [Codex CLI](https://toolweight.com/options/codex-cli), OpenAI's open-source Rust agent, with the strongest local sandboxing on this page.
- [Cursor](https://toolweight.com/options/cursor), VS Code fork with a real codebase index, background cloud agents and a CLI.
- [DIY harness](https://toolweight.com/options/diy-harness), Your own loop over a model API with an agent SDK, the build-it-yourself reference point.
- [Gemini CLI](https://toolweight.com/options/gemini-cli), Apache-2.0 terminal agent from Google with an unusually generous free tier.
- [GitHub Copilot (Agent HQ)](https://toolweight.com/options/github-copilot), Copilot's coding agent plus a control plane for running third-party agents on your repos.
- [Goose](https://toolweight.com/options/goose), Block's Apache-2.0 agent, MCP-native from the start, as both a CLI and a desktop app.
- [Grok Build](https://toolweight.com/options/grok-build), xAI's coding harness, launched July 2026, on this page but not yet verified.
- [Kilo Code](https://toolweight.com/options/kilo-code), Open-source VS Code agent in the Cline/Roo lineage, with an orchestrator mode and a CLI.

## Licence and attribution

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- Licence: [CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/devin.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
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