# Devin vs OpenAI Agents API (slim)

> OpenAI Agents scores 73.3 (BB) to Devin's 57.3 (C) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-openai-agents-api.md (~6,200 tokens) · this version ~2,880 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-openai-agents-api.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-openai-agents-api
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-06
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

OpenAI Agents API scores 73.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Devin's 57.3 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harnesses.

- Devin: C 57.3, rank #718 of 1354 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/devin.min.md
- OpenAI Agents API: BB 73.3, rank #99 of 1354 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openai-agents-api.min.md
- Devin, 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.
- OpenAI Agents API, good for Teams that want OpenAI to run the agent loop, with sandboxes, MCP tools and subagents, and are fine with a beta API, US-only data residency and no Zero Data Retention. Ahead on Reliability, 60 against 35; Schema & documentation, 88 against 80; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 62; Security & auth, 87 against 72; Payments & pricing, 30 against 20; Maintenance & community, 87 against 63; Transparency & trust, 85 against 75. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.

| Category | Devin | OpenAI Agents API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 35 | 60 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 62 | 80 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 72 | 87 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 63 | 87 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 75 | 85 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Devin | OpenAI Agents API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cognition AI, Inc. | OpenAI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.devin.ai/mcp` | `https://api.openai.com/v1/agents/sessions` |
| Transports | HTTP | https |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of Service | Proprietary hosted API under OpenAI's Services Agreement. The SDKs are Apache 2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 13 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-30 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-03-09 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | couldn't be read |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, OpenAI Agents API +25: Devin 35 (Hosted reading. Status page at www.devinstatus.com (Atlassian Statuspage) with 14 components, among them Cloud Agent and Cloud Web Client, read from the page itself on 4 November 2026 (20). Its history feed for the 90 days from 6 August 2026 lists Devin unavailable on 13 August (20 minutes), Devin Cloud unavailable on 13 August (2 hours 40 minutes) and the web app down on 24 September (about 2 hours), with minor session and Ask Devin incidents on 10 and 11 August, 3 and 17 September and 26 October. Both 13 August entries report the service unavailable. The 24 September entry names only the web app, not the API or the MCP server, so it is read as partial, as dashboard outages are on other listings. Two majors (5). Two scheduled maintenance entries (7 and 17 August) are read as maintenance. 429 is a documented response, but no rate limit figures were found (0). No Retry-After or backoff guidance found, and v3 session creation has no idempotency key (0). The platform terms give no guarantee of availability, and enterprise terms weren't read (0). The v3 API is the current, recommended surface, with 27 of 274 operations under /v3beta1 (10).); OpenAI Agents API 60 (Read as a hosted API. status.openai.com has an Agents component under APIs (20). Since release on 10 September (57 days, not 90), the feed names the Agents API in a degraded-performance incident on 14 September, the elevated errors across ChatGPT, Codex and the API on 29 September (the openai-api listing reads that one as a major, 17:52 to 23:14 UTC), computer use issues and degraded workspace agents on 6 and 7 October, degraded performance across the APIs for 22 minutes on 21 October, and overbilling for hosted containers on 19 September. One major, the rest minor (10). Rate limits come from the shared guide, published per tier and model with headers, and the errors page adds a Files API allowance on session creation (15). 429 and 503 guidance with Retry-After, capped backoff and a check-then-retry procedure for turns (15). The Scale Tier SLA in the openai-api listing isn't shown to cover a beta API (0). Public beta behind the agents=v1 header (0). 20 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 = 60.)
- Maintenance & community, OpenAI Agents API +24: Devin 63 (Closed service. Newest release note dated 2 November 2026 (30). Thirty dated release notes between 7 August and 2 November 2026, and API notes for August, September, October and November (20). Public release notes and a support address, with no public tracker or forum found (10). No official SDK for the Devin API found (a Python SDK in the federal docs covers analytics and ACU limits for air-gapped Desktop), and the Devin MCP server didn't appear in the official MCP registry per the 8 October check (0). No public CI or packages to assess, with the docs and three OpenAPI specs kept current (3).); OpenAI Agents API 87 (Closed API. Last dated change 16 October 2026, Ultrafast mode and document skills (30). Four dated changelog entries in the 57 days since release, 10 September, 29 September, 9 October and 16 October (20). Changelog and help centre, as the openai-api listing reads them (12 of 15). Official SDKs carry beta.agents (15). SDK CI, per the openai-api listing (10). 30 + 20 + 12 + 15 + 10 = 87.)
- Agent ergonomics, OpenAI Agents API +18: Devin 62 (API and MCP reading. The MCP server documents 13 tools, several of them consolidated manage tools, and list endpoints take `first` to size a page (17). Cursor pagination on every v3 list endpoint and filters on session search by tag, playbook, origin, user and time (18). problem+json with `error_code`, field-level errors on 422 and a 400 that lists valid platform names, but no published code list (15). No idempotency key on v3 session creation. `max_acu_limit` caps what a session can spend, and the MCP tool annotations couldn't be read without a key (4). Only `prompt` is required to start a session. No official SDK found, only a Terraform provider (8).); OpenAI Agents API 80 (Read as an API an agent drives. Context is compacted automatically, and session budgets and streamed events keep output sized (20 of 25). Sessions can be listed, continued and steered, events streamed or sent by webhook, artifacts fetched (15 of 20). Actionable error codes with recovery steps (20). No idempotency key; a documented check-then-retry procedure (10 of 20). One session call with defaults (medium sandbox, network enabled), SDKs in five languages (15). 20 + 15 + 20 + 10 + 15 = 80.)
- Security & auth, OpenAI Agents API +15: Devin 72 (Hosted reading. Service-user keys with roles and named permissions per endpoint, revocable, with rotation endpoints in beta for Enterprise and expiring personal tokens. Custom roles are an Enterprise option, and Teams has Admin and Member only (25). Security profiles restrict network, MCP servers, git and the Devin MCP to read-only, and read-only API permissions exist. They are opt-in, and session creation accepts `bypass_approval` (16). AI Guardrails screen user messages and pull request comments for prompt injection, on Enterprise only, and they don't cover web pages or repository content Devin reads (8). Audit logs through the API need an enterprise-level permission. Session events and insights are available on all plans (10). SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, a disclosure address at security@cognition.ai, no security.txt, and the trust centre answers No to having a bug bounty (13).); OpenAI Agents API 87 (Project keys with restricted per-endpoint permissions, service accounts and workload identity, per the openai-api listing; we didn't confirm a key can be limited to /v1/agents (27 of 30). Automatic review for approvals, a sandbox network restricted to a host allowlist, vaults for secrets and a sandbox security guide (17 of 20). The agent reads web pages, MCP results and browser content; the sandbox security guide and approval flow are the mitigations, with no prompt-injection guide of its own found (8 of 15). Tracing, observability and usage per session and admin audit logs (15). SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 family, Bugcrowd bounty and a disclosure policy, per the openai-api listing (20). Not ZDR-eligible and US residency only, recorded under transparency. 27 + 17 + 8 + 15 + 20 = 87.)
- Payments & pricing, OpenAI Agents API +10: Devin 20 (Published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Plan prices are public, $20, $200 and $40 a seat with an $80 team minimum, but usage past the quota is billed at an unpublished rate (10). A Free plan exists. The pricing page lists cloud agents from Pro upward, and we couldn't confirm API use on Free or whether a card is needed (10). A person signs up in a browser and provisions the service user in settings (0).); OpenAI Agents API 30 (No machine payment protocol (0). Model, tool and container prices published without a login, and no fee for the API itself (20). The Free tier reading of the openai-api listing, half (10). Sign-up in a browser (0). 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30.)
- Transparency & trust, OpenAI Agents API +10: Devin 75 (Editorial half. Closed source with clear terms from Cognition AI, Inc. (15). Terms (30 June 2026), privacy policy, security page and data processing agreement agree with each other. Customer data may be used for model training by default on self-serve plans, with an opt-out on paid plans that also turns on zero data retention at model providers, and Enterprise data isn't trained on without written consent. Retention is stated as the length of the customer relationship, with no periods (18). The API versioning policy on the release notes page says breaking changes are announced at least 7 days in advance and a deprecated endpoint stays available through a deprecation period. Dated notices followed it for the schedules endpoints (announced 10 September, creation refused from 24 September 2026), and others cover the v2 clone endpoint and Playbooks moving to Skills (23 October). v1 and v2 are marked legacy with no end date (20). Sub-processors listed with purpose and country, and 15 days' notice of additions, per the 8 October check (18).); OpenAI Agents API 85 (Closed service with clear terms, Apache-2.0 SDKs (15). Session state retained until deleted, deletable sessions and artifacts, not ZDR-eligible, US residency only, and the data-controls guide agrees; no retention period for artifacts after a sandbox expires (25 of 30). Dated deprecation notices with minimum periods for GA models; a beta API can change faster (15 of 20). Subprocessors and processing countries listed, per the openai-api listing (20). 15 + 25 + 15 + 20 = 75.)