# Cursor CLI vs Devin

> Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cursor CLI leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harness. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cursor CLI leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harness.

- Cursor CLI: grade F, 35.3/100, rank #617 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-cli.json
- Devin: grade C, 55.7/100, rank #447 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/devin.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/devin.json

## Which one, for what

### Cursor CLI (F)

Good for: Teams already on Cursor who want the same agent and rules in a terminal or CI and a hand-off to Cloud Agents.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 25 against 20

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No CLI changelog, and versions are dates

### Devin (C)

Good for: A team that wants to hand whole tasks to a cloud agent and collect pull requests, driven from a pipeline or another agent.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 80 against 39
- Agent ergonomics, 62 against 42
- Security & auth, 72 against 46
- Transparency & trust, 69 against 59

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Cursor CLI loses 5 points for them

Watch for: www.devinstatus.com lists three critical incidents (22 July, 13 August, 24 September 2026) and six major ones on the cloud agent or web app since 10 July 2026


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cursor CLI | Devin | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 27 | 30 | Devin +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 39 | 80 | Devin +41 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 42 | 62 | Devin +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 46 | 72 | Devin +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 20 | Cursor CLI +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 63 | Devin +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 69 | Devin +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **35.3 · F** | **55.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cursor CLI | Devin |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cursor | Cognition AI, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://mcp.devin.ai/mcp` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | Proprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of Service |
| Tools exposed | none | 13 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | 2026-06-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | 2026-03-09 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Cursor CLI.** Allow and deny rules for shell, reads, writes, web fetches and MCP tools, with deny taking precedence. No CLI changelog, and versions are dates.

**Devin.** The v3 API is well specified, with a public OpenAPI 3.1 file covering 239 operations, problem+json errors, cursor pagination and service-user keys tied to roles. The status page records three critical and several major incidents on the cloud agent between 22 July and 24 September 2026, and no rate limit figures or retry guidance were found in the reviewed documentation.

## Before you call either

### Cursor CLI

1. Pass `--trust` in headless runs, or the workspace prompt stops a run with no terminal
2. Write deny rules in .cursor/cli.json before using `--force`. It runs any command they don't match
3. Don't use `--approve-mcps` in repositories you didn't write. Two 2025 CLI advisories came through MCP
4. Set `CURSOR_API_KEY` in CI. `agent login` opens a browser
5. Record `agent --version` with each run. Versions are dates and there's no CLI changelog to compare against

### Devin

1. Use a `cog_` service-user key with the Member role. Legacy `apk_` keys fail against v3 and the MCP server with 401 or 403
2. Set `max_acu_limit` on every session you create. Usage is metered by the work done and has no published unit rate
3. Session creation is not idempotent in v3. After a timeout, list sessions by tag before creating again
4. Enterprise keys and personal access tokens must send `X-Org-Id` to the MCP server. Organisation-scoped keys resolve it automatically
5. Create scheduled work as an automation. POST to the schedules endpoint returns 403 for migrated organisations since 24 September 2026

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cursor CLI or Devin?

Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cursor CLI leads on payments & pricing.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "cursor-cli", "b": "devin"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare cursor-cli devin`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-cli.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/devin.json

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