# Devin vs HarnessRouter

> Devin scores 55.7 (C) to HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

- Devin: grade C, 55.7/100, rank #723 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/devin.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/devin.json
- HarnessRouter: grade D, 53.2/100, rank #796 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harnessrouter.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/harnessrouter.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 331 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## 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:
- Security & auth, 72 against 58

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where HarnessRouter 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

### HarnessRouter (D)

Good for: A product team that wants to run Codex, Claude Code, Hermes or 23 other harnesses server-side behind one task, session and file contract, and switch between them by changing an ID.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 35 against 30
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 62
- Payments & pricing, 25 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 72 against 63

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: No status page found (status.harnessrouter.ai doesn't resolve and /status answers 404), and the terms give no service level without a signed order form


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Devin | HarnessRouter | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 35 | HarnessRouter +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 83 | HarnessRouter +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 62 | 73 | HarnessRouter +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 72 | 58 | Devin +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 25 | HarnessRouter +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 72 | HarnessRouter +9 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 72 | HarnessRouter +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -5 | |
| **Total** | | **55.7 · C** | **53.2 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Devin | HarnessRouter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cognition AI, Inc. | HarnessRouter (Lumentree Corporation) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.devin.ai/mcp` | `https://api.harnessrouter.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of Service | Apache-2.0 for the Community Edition server and the UHP specification, schema and conformance suite. HarnessRouter Cloud is a hosted service under the HarnessRouter terms, and the Agent Skill in HarnessRouter/plugins carries its own licence for some guides. |
| Tools exposed | 13 | 0 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-30 |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-03-09 |  |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | none | 3.1k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

## 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.

**HarnessRouter.** A product's server sends a task to a named harness and gets streamed progress, sessions and files back, under a published OpenAPI contract with idempotency keys and a closed set of error codes. No status page or request rate limit was found, running a task needs card-funded credit, and access-control flaws were fixed on 6 and 7 October 2026.

## 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

### HarnessRouter

1. Name the harness yourself. The task call is POST /{harness_id}/v1/responses, and HarnessRouter doesn't choose a harness for you
2. Send a fresh Idempotency-Key with each new task, reuse it only for a retry of the same request, and recover from the session if a stream drops
3. Call cancel to stop work. Closing the SSE connection leaves the agent running and billing
4. Keep the Workspace API key on the server. The docs forbid calling the API from a browser with it
5. Check each tool's enforcement in GET /v1/bases. On bases marked instruction, disabled_tools is a request to the model, not a block

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Devin or HarnessRouter?

Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Are Devin and HarnessRouter open source?

No open-source release is listed for Devin. HarnessRouter is open source (Apache-2.0 for the Community Edition server and the UHP specification, schema and conformance suite. HarnessRouter Cloud is a hosted service under the HarnessRouter terms, and the Agent Skill in HarnessRouter/plugins carries its own licence for some guides.).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Devin or HarnessRouter

- [Agent Zero vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-devin.md)
- [Agent Zero vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Aider vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-devin.md)
- [Aider vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aider-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Amp vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-devin.md)
- [Amp vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amp-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-devin.md)
- [Antigravity CLI vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/antigravity-cli-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Claude Code vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-devin.md)
- [Claude Code vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-code-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Cline vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-devin.md)
- [Cline vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Cursor CLI vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-devin.md)
- [Cursor CLI vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Devin vs Droid CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-droid-cli.md)
- [Devin vs Pi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-earendil-pi.md)
- [Devin vs Gemini CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-gemini-cli.md)
- [Devin vs GitHub Copilot CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-github-copilot-cli.md)
- [Devin vs goose](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-goose.md)
- [Devin vs Kilo Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-kilo-code-cli.md)
- [Devin vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-kiro-cli.md)
- [Devin vs Muse Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-muse-code.md)
- [Devin vs OpenAI Codex](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-openai-codex.md)
- [Devin vs OpenCode](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-opencode.md)
- [Devin vs OpenHands](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-openhands.md)
- [Devin vs Prime Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-prime-agent.md)
- [Devin vs Qwen Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-qwen-code.md)
- [Devin vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
- [Droid CLI vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/droid-cli-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Pi vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/earendil-pi-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Gemini CLI vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-cli-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [GitHub Copilot CLI vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/github-copilot-cli-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [goose vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/goose-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Kilo Code CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-kilo-code-cli.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Kiro CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-kiro-cli.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Muse Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-muse-code.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs OpenAI Codex](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-openai-codex.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs OpenCode](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-opencode.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs OpenHands](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-openhands.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Prime Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-prime-agent.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Qwen Code](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-qwen-code.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Mirror CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-reflection-mirror.md)
- [CLI Manager vs Devin](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cli-manager-vs-devin.md)
- [CLI Manager vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cli-manager-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [Devin vs Harness](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-harness-autonomous.md)
- [Devin vs Paperclip](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-paperclip.md)
- [Devin vs Parallax](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-parallax-agents.md)
- [Harness vs HarnessRouter](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness-autonomous-vs-harnessrouter.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Paperclip](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-paperclip.md)
- [HarnessRouter vs Parallax](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harnessrouter-vs-parallax-agents.md)

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