Compare

Devin vs Claude Code

Published 2026-10-31

Who this is for: developers and engineering leads who use, or are weighing, both Claude Code and Devin, and want to know which jobs each fits and how to run them side by side.

Short answer: Devin and Claude Code are both AI coding agents that read a codebase, edit files, run commands, and open pull requests. They start from different ends. Claude Code is Anthropic’s agent that works where you already work: your terminal, your editor, or a session you start in the browser. Devin is Cognition’s agent built around delegation: you hand it a task, it works in its own cloud machine, and it comes back with a pull request. In practice they overlap more every month, and the most useful setup is often both, joined by a handoff.

One way to use Claude Code and Devin together

Read the steps as text

Explore and plan in Claude Code. Work through the change in your terminal or editor. DeepWiki's MCP server can answer architecture questions about public repositories.
Hand off to Devin. Ask Claude Code to "hand this off to Devin." Devin Handoff sends the repository, the branch, your uncommitted changes (up to 100KB), and what Claude Code has learned to a new Devin Cloud session.
Devin works in its own cloud machine. It plans the task, writes and runs the code, tests it, and opens a pull request.
Review the pull request. Devin Review can review pull requests from either tool, when you trigger it or your review rules match.
A person merges. A developer reads the change and the review, and decides.

Explore and plan in Claude Code. Work through the change in your terminal or editor. DeepWiki's MCP server can answer architecture questions about public repositories.
Hand off to Devin. Ask Claude Code to "hand this off to Devin." Devin Handoff sends the repository, the branch, your uncommitted changes (up to 100KB), and what Claude Code has learned to a new Devin Cloud session.
Devin works in its own cloud machine. It plans the task, writes and runs the code, tests it, and opens a pull request.
Review the pull request. Devin Review can review pull requests from either tool, when you trigger it or your review rules match.
A person merges. A developer reads the change and the review, and decides.

The Use them together section explains each link in this workflow.

Side-by-side comparison table

	Devin	Claude Code
Made by	Cognition	Anthropic
Center of gravity	Delegated, long-running tasks in Devin’s own cloud machine	An agent in your terminal and editor, plus cloud sessions on the web
Where it runs	Devin Cloud, Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf), Devin CLI, and editors through ACP	Terminal, VS Code, JetBrains, a desktop app, the web, and iOS and Android apps
Team channels	Slack and Microsoft Teams	Slack
Models	Models from several labs, chosen by you or by Cognition’s Adaptive router in Devin Desktop	Anthropic’s Claude models, such as Opus and Sonnet; the terminal, VS Code, and JetBrains also work through third-party cloud providers
Extending it	Skills, MCP, CLI plugins	CLAUDE.md, skills, hooks, plugins, and MCP
Code review	Devin Review on pull requests	Code Review on pull requests (Team and Enterprise), plus reviews in CI with GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD
Pricing entry	Free plan; Pro $20/month	Included with Claude Pro ($20/month) and higher plans; not on the free plan

How each one works

Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic’s agentic coding tool, terminal-first but no longer terminal-only. It reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands, and works with your development tools. Anthropic’s documentation describes one engine behind several surfaces: the terminal, IDE extensions for VS Code and JetBrains, a desktop app, and the web. Your CLAUDE.md files, settings, and MCP servers carry across all of them.

Typical use is interactive: you describe a change in your terminal or editor, Claude Code proposes and makes edits, and you review the diffs as it goes. It can also work on its own. You can start a long-running task on the web or the mobile app and pull it into your terminal later with /teleport, mention @Claude in Slack with a bug report and get a pull request back, run it in CI, or schedule recurring tasks such as morning pull request reviews. Teams customize it with instructions, skills, and hooks, and connect it to other tools, such as Jira, Google Drive, or internal systems, through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Devin

Devin is Cognition’s AI software engineer. In Devin Cloud, each session boots a fresh virtual machine from a snapshot of your environment, with its own shell, editor, and browser. Devin plans the task, writes and runs the code, tests it, and usually finishes by opening a pull request. You can watch, step in, or walk away. Cognition’s own rule of thumb is: “if you can do it in three hours, Devin can most likely do it.”

Devin also runs locally. Devin Desktop, the editor formerly called Windsurf, has an Agent Command Center built in for managing local and cloud agents. The Devin CLI works in your terminal and can pass a long task to Devin Cloud with /handoff. Through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), Devin runs inside JetBrains IDEs, Zed, and Xcode. Around the agent sit Devin Review, for reviewing pull requests, and DeepWiki, which writes documentation for a repository automatically.

More detail: What is Devin AI? and Devin’s four surfaces.

Where each one is stronger

Neither tool is a replacement for the other, and the gap keeps narrowing. Based on how each is documented and packaged:

Claude Code is the natural fit when:

you want the agent in your terminal or editor, working with you on the code in front of you;
your team has standardized on Claude models and Anthropic plans;
you want to shape the agent with hooks, skills, and CLAUDE.md files that live in your repository;
you need to run through Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud’s Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI), which the terminal, VS Code, and JetBrains versions support.

Devin is the natural fit when:

you want to delegate a well-scoped task, such as a GitHub issue, a dependency upgrade, or a small frontend fix, and get a pull request back without tying up your own machine;
you want many tasks running in parallel, one cloud session per ticket;
you want pull request review (Devin Review) and generated codebase docs (DeepWiki) from the same vendor;
you want to choose among models from several labs, or let Cognition’s Adaptive router choose, rather than staying with one lab.

Autonomy and control

Both agents can work on their own, and both let you stay in the loop. The difference is the default.

Claude Code starts close to you. In the terminal or your editor, you can have it ask before it edits files or runs commands, and you can see and steer each step, which makes it a tight feedback loop for refactoring, debugging, and multi-file changes you want to watch. When you want it to run on its own, you can start a cloud session on the web, run it in CI, or schedule it.

Devin starts at a distance. A Devin Cloud session is meant to run without you: it plans, works in its own sandboxed machine, runs the test suite, and reports back. You can open the session at any time, take over the editor or shell, or answer its questions, but the expected pattern is to hand off a whole task and review the pull request.

Code quality and benchmarks

There is no independent, side-by-side benchmark of Claude Code and Devin as products. Published numbers measure models, or a model inside one vendor’s harness, on different tests:

Anthropic publishes benchmark results for its Claude models.
Cognition publishes FrontierCode, its own benchmark, which ranks models on coding tasks. It is Cognition’s benchmark, and Cognition sells Devin, so treat it as a vendor’s view. Our Bench page tracks it with that caveat.

In practice, results depend on the task, the model selected, and how well the task is scoped. The only comparison that settles it for your team is running both on the same tasks from your own repository and reviewing the pull requests side by side.

Can Devin or Claude Code replace a developer?

No. Both are tools that do engineering work under human direction. Each can take a well-scoped ticket from description to pull request, but people still decide what to build, own the architecture and security review, and decide what gets merged. Treat either one’s pull request like one from a capable new teammate: useful, and still reviewed.

Pricing

Claude Code has no separate price. It is included with Anthropic’s paid Claude plans: Pro at $20 a month, Max at $100, Ultra at $200 (formerly called Max 20x), and Team and Enterprise seats. It is not included on the free plan. Developers can also pay per token through the Anthropic API. Check claude.com/pricing for current plans and limits.

Devin has a free plan, Pro at $20 a month, Max at $200 a month, Teams at an $80 monthly minimum, and Enterprise through sales. Usage counts against allowances that refresh daily and weekly (weekly only on Max). Details: Plans, usage, and what an ACU actually is.

The prices look similar at the entry level. What you actually spend depends on how much agent work each task takes, so compare on your own tasks.

Use them together

This is the part most comparisons skip. The two tools connect directly:

Hand work from Claude Code to Devin. Devin Handoff is an open-source plugin and skill from Cognition that installs into Claude Code. Inside Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add club-cog/devin-handoff and /plugin install devin-handoff@cognition, then set DEVIN_API_KEY to a key from your Devin settings. After that, ask Claude Code to “hand this off to Devin.” It sends the repository, branch, your uncommitted changes (up to 100KB), and what Claude Code has already learned to a new Devin Cloud session, so commit or stash anything you don’t want sent (Devin docs).
Give Claude Code your codebase docs. DeepWiki’s MCP server plugs into Claude Code like any other MCP server, so Claude Code can answer architecture questions from DeepWiki’s generated documentation. It covers public repositories; for private repositories, use the Devin MCP server with an API key.
Drive Devin from Claude Code. The Devin MCP server lets an MCP client such as Claude Code create and manage Devin sessions.
Run Claude inside Devin Desktop. Devin Desktop supports the open Agent Client Protocol, and Cognition lists Claude Agent among the third-party agents that can run inside it.
Review everything the same way. Devin Review can review any pull request in repositories connected to your organization, whoever wrote it, when you trigger it or your review rules match. Pull requests from Claude Code and from Devin can go through the same review step.

A workflow that uses both: explore and plan in Claude Code at your desk, hand the well-defined, long-running parts to a Devin Cloud session, and review every resulting pull request with Devin Review before a person merges.

Honest overlap

Both tools now run in the terminal, in editors, in the cloud, and in Slack. Both open pull requests, both extend through MCP and skills, and both have $20-a-month paid entry plans. The real differences are where the work happens by default, which models you want, and how much you want to delegate rather than pair. Try both on the same three tasks from your own backlog before deciding, and expect to keep both.

Frequently asked questions

Which is better for coding, Devin or Claude Code? Neither is better at everything. Claude Code fits work you want to do alongside the agent in your terminal or IDE. Devin fits work you want to delegate and get back as a pull request. Many engineering teams use both.

Can I use Claude Code and Devin together? Yes. The Devin Handoff plugin sends a task from Claude Code to a Devin Cloud session, and Devin’s MCP servers connect the two in the other direction.

What about Cursor and Codex? They belong to the same category. Cursor is an AI code editor, and Codex is OpenAI’s coding agent. Devin Handoff works with both as well. See Devin vs Cursor and the full comparison hub.

What is an ACU? It is the unit Devin’s Enterprise plan uses to bill agent work. Self-serve plans use daily and weekly allowances instead. Our plans guide explains both.

Sources and freshness

Checked October 31, 2026. Product details change often; re-check before you buy.

Claude Code overview and platforms — Anthropic
Claude pricing — Anthropic
What is the Ultra plan? — Anthropic
Code Review is now generally available — Anthropic
Adaptive model routing — Cognition
Devin documentation — Cognition
Hand off to cloud Devins — Cognition
Devin Handoff on GitHub — Cognition
Windsurf is now Devin Desktop — Cognition
Self-serve plans — Cognition

Editorial comparison. Trademarks belong to their respective owners.