Devin vs OpenHands
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Devin if you want autonomous ai software engineer that takes delegated tickets to a reviewed pr (Supervised agent, usage); choose OpenHands if you want open-source ai software engineer that edits, runs, and tests code in a sandbox (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Devin | OpenHands | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Autonomous AI software engineer that takes delegated tickets to a reviewed PR | Open-source AI software engineer that edits, runs, and tests code in a sandbox |
| Type | agent | framework |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | usage · $20/mo + usage (ACU credits) | freemium · Free (open source, self-hosted); Cloud free tier with usage caps |
| Best for | enterprise, mid-market, developers | developers, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas, api | self-hosted, saas, api, on-prem |
| Modalities | text, code, browser, api | text, code, browser, api |
| Models | claude, proprietary | model-agnostic, claude, gpt, gemini, open-source |
| Protocols | mcp, rest-api, function-calling | mcp, rest-api, function-calling |
| Integrations | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Jira, Linear |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 documented |
Devin
- +Genuinely async, delegated model: handles whole tickets and large parallel migrations rather than line-by-line autocomplete
- +Deep workflow integration (Slack, Jira, Linear, GitHub) plus DeepWiki codebase indexing and a public API
- +Validated at large, complex enterprises
- -Best on clear, verifiable tasks; Cognition's own framing acknowledges it can make mistakes or get stuck on complex work and needs human review
- -Usage-based ACU billing can get expensive and unpredictable on open-ended work
OpenHands
- +Fully open source (MIT core) and model-agnostic with no vendor lock-in; self-hostable for privacy
- +Genuinely agentic: edits, runs, and tests code in a sandbox and opens PRs, not just autocomplete
- +Large open-source community plus a mature SDK, REST/WebSocket API, and MCP support
- -Open-source build is single-user with no built-in auth/isolation; teams need the Enterprise tier
- -Output must be reviewed and tested, and open-ended tasks can burn many LLM calls
Which should you choose?
Devin is autonomous ai software engineer that takes delegated tickets to a reviewed pr, best for enterprise, mid-market, developers. OpenHands is open-source ai software engineer that edits, runs, and tests code in a sandbox, best for developers, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.