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Devin

Cognition's autonomous software engineer — you assign it a ticket and review the pull request.

Open official site devin.aiFree tier available · from $20/moAI Coding ToolsAI Agents

Devin is the cloud agent from Cognition, the company that also owns the editor formerly called Windsurf (now Devin Desktop). Where an editor agent works alongside you, Devin is built to be delegated to: it takes a task from Slack, Linear or GitHub, works in its own environment, and comes back with a pull request that responds to review comments and CI. Cognition positions it for the work teams postpone — migrations, bug backlogs, incident triage — and lets you run several Devins in parallel on a large job.

People searching "Windsurf vs Devin" are usually asking a question that stopped having the shape they expect: both now belong to Cognition, and the Windsurf editor ships as Devin Desktop. The real choice inside that family is between working with an agent in your editor and handing a task to one in the cloud. Devin is the second thing. That distinction decides more than any feature list, because delegation only pays off when the task is specified well enough to be reviewed as a pull request rather than supervised as it happens.

Our take

Worth it when you have a backlog of well-specified, reviewable work and a team that already lives in pull requests. It is a poor fit for exploratory work where you do not yet know what you want, because the feedback loop runs through a PR instead of through your editor. Start on the $20 plan with one narrow class of task before judging it.

Last checked 2026-09-20

Best for

  • Teams with migration or bug backlogs that never get scheduled
  • Work that can be specified in a ticket and judged in a pull request
  • Organisations already routing engineering work through Slack and Linear

Limitations

  • Feedback arrives as a pull request, not as you type
  • Quotas on every plan; heavy use pushes you toward the $200 tier
  • Output quality tracks how well the task was specified

When to pick something else

  • Exploratory coding where the requirement is still forming
  • Solo developers who want an agent inside the editor
  • Teams without a code review habit to catch its mistakes

Key features

  • Takes tasks from Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear and GitHub
  • Works in its own cloud environment and opens pull requests
  • Responds to PR review feedback and CI results
  • Parallel sessions for migrations and other large jobs
  • Web app, Devin Desktop, CLI and API

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