Last updated: May 2026
Devin is a fully autonomous AI software engineer by Cognition AI. Unlike Cursor, Copilot, or Cline — which assist developers while they code — Devin works independently. You give it a task, it spins up a virtual machine with a full development environment, plans and executes the work, runs tests, debugs failures, and delivers a result. You review the output when it is done. Devin is the most autonomous AI coding agent commercially available in 2026.
Devin uses ACU-based pricing — Agentic Computing Units, which measure the actual compute resources (VM time, model inference, networking) Devin consumes while working.
| Plan | Price | ACUs included | Concurrent sessions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beta/Individual | ~$20/month | Limited | Limited |
| Core | Pay-per-ACU | None (top-up only) | Up to 10 |
| Team | $500/month | 250 ACUs ($2.00/ACU) | Unlimited |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited |
For the Team plan, 250 ACUs at $2.00 each is a slight discount from Core rates. Additional ACUs beyond the included allocation can be purchased as needed with auto-reload settings.
An ACU (Agentic Computing Unit) is Cognition's normalized measure of the resources Devin uses while actively working on a task — virtual machine time, model inference, and network bandwidth combined. You pay for the work Devin performs, not for seats. All plans include unlimited user seats; what you are buying is active working time.
Devin has been used in production for:
Devin handles tasks that take hours of human developer time, running unattended. The longer and more clearly scoped the task, the better the results.
| Devin | Claude Code | Cline | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autonomy | Fully autonomous | High (terminal agent) | High (IDE extension) |
| Environment | Cloud VM (sandboxed) | Your local machine | Your local machine |
| Cost | $500/month (Team) | $20–200/month | Free + API costs |
| Parallelism | Unlimited concurrent | Multiple subagents | Single session |
| IDE required | No | Terminal | VS Code |
Claude Code and Cline run on your machine and require you to be present for the session. Devin runs in the cloud and works while you sleep. The price difference reflects this: Devin's Team plan at $500/month is designed for teams delegating significant engineering work, not individual developers looking for coding assistance.
A beta individual plan at approximately $20/month has been available, representing significantly reduced pricing from earlier per-task rates to drive adoption. Check devin.ai/pricing for current availability.
OpenHands is the open-source alternative to Devin from All Hands AI. It replicates Devin's autonomous agent architecture — sandboxed environment, plan-execute-debug loop — but as an open-source project you can self-host. OpenHands is free to run with your own API keys. For teams that want Devin-style autonomy without the $500/month cost, OpenHands is the closest free alternative, though it requires infrastructure setup and is less polished than the commercial product.
Engineering teams with well-defined, repetitive, or large-scale tasks that currently require significant developer hours — migrations, test coverage expansion, dependency updates, documentation generation. The math works when Devin can handle tasks autonomously that would otherwise cost more in engineering time. For individual developers or teams that primarily want AI assistance while actively coding, Claude Code, Cursor, or Cline deliver better value at lower cost. See the Devin listing for a full capability overview.