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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Devin vs Kimi Code CLI

Kimi Code CLI scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

DevinCognition AI, Inc. · Agent harness C55.7/100#730 of 1146 Kimi Code CLIMoonshot AI · Agent harness B62.1/100#492 of 1146

Which one, for what

Devin C

Best 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 45
  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 62

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where Kimi Code CLI loses 4 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

Kimi Code CLI B

Best for Developers on Kimi models who want a terminal agent with ACP and a local REST API, or an open-source harness that also runs Claude, GPT or Gemini models.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 68 against 30
  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 80
  • Agent ergonomics, 71 against 62
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 72 against 63

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

Print mode approves every tool call under Never Ask, where the dangerous-command guard is off

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDevinKimi Code CLIEdge
Reliability16%203068Kimi Code CLI +38
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28085Kimi Code CLI +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.26271Kimi Code CLI +9
Security & auth14%17.57245Devin +27
Payments & pricing10%12.52060Kimi Code CLI +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86372Kimi Code CLI +9
Transparency & trust7%8.86962Devin +7
Negative events≤150-4
TotalC 55.7/100B 62.1/100

Facts side by side

FactDevinKimi Code CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCognition AI, Inc.Moonshot AI
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.devin.ai/mcpno (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of ServiceMIT
Tools exposed13none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-10-14
Terms last updated2026-06-30
Privacy policy last updated2026-03-09
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
Popularitynone37k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (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.

Kimi Code CLI

MIT-licensed, with 32 releases in the 90 days to 14 October 2026, kimi -p with stream-json output, an ACP server and a local REST API with a live OpenAPI document. Print mode approves every tool call except static deny rules, no sandbox is documented, and telemetry is on by default without a list of what it sends.

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

Kimi Code CLI

  1. kimi -p approves every tool call. Add [[permission.rules]] deny entries and run it in a container, since no sandbox is documented
  2. Set KIMI_LOOP_MAX_STEPS_PER_TURN for unattended runs. Steps per turn are unlimited by default
  3. Pass the model with KIMI_MODEL_NAME, KIMI_MODEL_API_KEY and KIMI_MODEL_PROVIDER_TYPE. OPENAI_API_KEY or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in the shell is ignored otherwise
  4. Set KIMI_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 and use 0.41.0 or later, since earlier print-mode runs ignored it
  5. Install @moonshot-ai/kimi-code or the kimi-code formula. The kimi-cli and kimi-code packages on PyPI are the archived Python CLI

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Devin or Kimi Code CLI?

Kimi Code CLI scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on security & auth and transparency & trust.

Are Devin and Kimi Code CLI open source?

No open-source release is listed for Devin. Kimi Code CLI is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Devin or Kimi Code CLI

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