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Head to head · Agent harness · October 2026 research run

Devin vs goose

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on transparency & trust. Both do agent harness.

DevinCognition AI, Inc. · Agent harness C55.7/100#447 of 629 gooseAgentic AI Foundation (originally Block) · Agent harness BB73.9/100#68 of 629

Which one, for what

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

  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 63

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

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

goose BB

Good for People and pipelines that want one agent across many model providers or local models, with recipes for repeatable jobs and a desktop app for non-engineers.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 77 against 30
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 62
  • Security & auth, 77 against 72
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 63

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDevingooseEdge
Reliability16%203077goose +47
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28081goose +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.26282goose +20
Security & auth14%17.57277goose +5
Payments & pricing10%12.52060goose +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86386goose +23
Transparency & trust7%8.86963Devin +6
Negative events≤150-2
Total55.7 · C73.9 · BB

Facts side by side

FactDevingoose
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCognition AI, Inc.Agentic AI Foundation (originally Block)
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.devin.ai/mcpno (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthAPI keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of ServiceApache-2.0
Tools exposed13none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-09-23
Terms last updated2026-06-30no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-03-09no document linked
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularitynone55k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

goose

Telemetry off until the user opts in, with the collected fields listed. Autonomous mode, which approves every tool call, is the default.

Before you call either

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

goose

  1. Set GOOSE_MODE=smart_approve or approve before a run. The default approves everything
  2. Pass --max-turns with a real limit. The default is 1000
  3. Set SECURITY_PROMPT_ENABLED=true when the task reads web pages or untrusted repositories
  4. Use --output-format json and --no-session in CI, and check the exit code
  5. Point remotes and links at aaif-goose/goose and goose-docs.ai. The block/goose paths redirect

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Devin or goose?

goose scores 73.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on transparency & trust.

Are Devin and goose open source?

No open-source release is listed for Devin. goose is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Devin or goose

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