Claude Code is a terminal agent that runs on your machine inside a session you are present for, included with Claude plans from $20/mo. Devin is an autonomous engineer from Cognition that runs each task on its own cloud VM and hands back a pull request, with self-serve tiers from free to $200/mo. Claude Code suits work you want to steer; Devin suits scoped work you want to assign and review later.
- Claude Code runs on your machine, in a session you are present for.
- Devin runs each task on its own cloud VM and returns a pull request.
- Devin now has a local CLI too, so "terminal vs cloud" is no longer the difference.
- Devin has a free tier; Claude Code does not.
- The binding constraint on both is how much code you can review.
The distinction that still holds
Most write-ups of this matchup describe Devin as the cloud one and Claude Code as the terminal one. That is out of date. Devin ships a local CLI that works against your files and your environment, with a /handoff command that escalates the same task to a cloud session when it outgrows your machine. Claude Code, in the other direction, runs headless in GitHub Actions.
What remains, and what actually decides the purchase, is the unit of delegation.
| Claude Code | Devin | |
|---|---|---|
| You hand over | A step, then the next step | A whole scoped task |
| You get back | A working tree you are watching change | A pull request |
| You are | Present, steering | Elsewhere, reviewing later |
| The environment is | Yours | A VM Devin owns |
| Failure looks like | A turn you correct in seconds | A PR that went the wrong way |
Side by side
Checked against vendor pages and documentation, August 2026.
| Claude Code | Devin | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Anthropic | Cognition |
| Entry price | $20/mo with Claude Pro | Free tier, then $20/mo |
| Top self-serve tier | $200/mo (Max 20x) | $200/mo (Max) |
| Free tier | None | Yes, limited quota |
| Where it runs | Your machine | Its own VM, or locally via the CLI |
| Models | Anthropic only | Several vendors, plus Cognition SWE models |
| Surfaces | Terminal, IDE extension, web, CI | Web app, Slack, Teams, IDE, API, CLI |
| Repo instructions | CLAUDE.md | Knowledge and Playbooks |
| Extensibility | Hooks, subagents, skills, MCP | Playbooks, API, integrations |
| Headless / CI | Yes, claude -p and Actions | Yes, via the API |
| Runs while you sleep | Only if you leave it running | Yes, by design |
What each costs
Claude Code
Claude Code is not sold separately. It comes with a Claude plan, and what you are buying up the ladder is headroom.
Claude plans, checked August 2026. Annual billing is cheaper per month.
| Plan | Monthly | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | No |
| Pro | $20 | Yes |
| Max 5x | $100 | Yes, more headroom |
| Max 20x | $200 | Yes, the heavy tier |
| Team | $25/seat standard, $125 premium | Yes |
| API | Per token | Yes, with a key |
Devin
Cognition restructured Devin onto plain subscription tiers with quotas that refresh on a daily and weekly cycle. The documentation still talks in ACUs, its normalised unit of the compute a session consumes, but the self-serve page now sells quota rather than a per-ACU rate.
Devin self-serve tiers, checked August 2026.
| Plan | Monthly | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Light quota, limited model availability |
| Pro | $20 | Higher quota, frontier models, cloud agents |
| Max | $200 | Significantly higher quotas |
| Teams | $80 plus $40/seat | Unlimited members, shared context |
| Enterprise | Custom | VPC, SSO, isolation, account team |
What each is genuinely good at
| Task | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Fix this failing test" while you watch | Claude Code | The correction loop is seconds long |
| A refactor you want to steer file by file | Claude Code | You are in the loop by design |
| Anything on a machine with local-only state | Claude Code | It runs where your environment is |
| Twelve small tickets nobody wants | Devin | Assign, review the PRs later |
| A dependency bump across repositories | Devin | Parallel sessions, no machine of yours involved |
| Work triggered from Slack by someone else | Devin | It lives where the request appears |
| A task nobody has scoped yet | Claude Code | Plan mode is a conversation, not an assignment |
| Deep customisation of the agent loop | Claude Code | Hooks, subagents, skills, MCP |
| Running three agents in parallel worktrees | Claude Code | One checkout each, on hardware you control |
The cost nobody prices: review
Both tools convert writing time into reviewing time. The difference is when the bill arrives and how large each instalment is.
| Claude Code | Devin | |
|---|---|---|
| Review happens | Continuously, per turn | All at once, per PR |
| A wrong turn costs | One correction | A whole session |
| You need to hold context | Yes, you were there | No, but you must reconstruct it |
| Scales by | Your attention | Your review capacity |
- Review deletions as carefully as additions. Removed lines get less scrutiny in a PR view and that is where regressions live.
- Keep the unit small enough to verify. An agent PR you cannot review carefully is a liability, not an asset, and the debt is invisible until something breaks.
- Commit before any unattended run. A clean tree is the difference between a reset and an investigation.
- Write the conventions down.
CLAUDE.mdon one side, Knowledge and Playbooks on the other. Neither agent absorbs house style the way a colleague does over months.
Running both, and the honest recommendation
These are not substitutes and a lot of teams end up with both: a session agent for the work you are thinking about, and an assignment agent for the queue of things that need doing but not thinking about. At $20 each that is a defensible $40 a month, and the free Devin tier means you can test the second half of that before committing.
Start with whichever you already own
If you pay for Claude, Claude Code is included and costs nothing extra. If you pay for neither, Devin has a free tier and Claude Code does not, so Devin is the cheaper first look.
Give each one the work it fits
Anything you would describe out loud in a sentence and then forget about goes to Devin. Anything you would have to think about while it happens stays in a session.
Measure the review time, not the agent time
The interesting number after a fortnight is not how much the agent produced. It is how many hours you spent reading it, and whether the pull requests you merged were ones you understood.
Questions people ask
They are built for different units of work. Devin is better when you can scope a task, assign it, and review a pull request later. Claude Code is better when you want to be in the loop, correcting course every few turns.
To start, yes. As of August 2026 Devin has a free tier with a light quota and Claude Code has none, so the first look at Devin costs nothing. At the paid tiers both start at $20 a month and both top out at $200 for self-serve.
Yes. Devin ships a local CLI that works with your files and environment, and a /handoff command that escalates the same task to a cloud session with its own VM. The old shorthand that Devin is cloud-only is out of date.
Devin offers a choice of frontier models from several vendors alongside Cognition's own SWE series. Claude Code runs Anthropic models only, with deeper integration into its own agent loop.
Devin, if the work arrives as tickets and requests in Slack, because it lives where those appear and returns pull requests. Claude Code, if the team wants individually configurable agents with hooks, subagents, and repo-level conventions in CLAUDE.md.
Claude Code runs headless with claude -p and has a GitHub Actions integration. Devin exposes an API you can trigger from a pipeline. Check plan terms in both cases: interactive subscriptions and automated use are usually governed differently.
That comparison changes with every model release and is the least durable thing to choose on. The durable question is which delegation shape fits your week, because that changes slowly.
No, but the pairing is coherent: a session agent for work you are thinking about, an assignment agent for the queue you are not. Devin's free tier makes testing that pairing close to free.
Sources
Every figure above was read from these pages on August 2026. Vendors reprice without notice; if you find a stale number, tell us.