# Devin vs Prime Agent

> Prime Agent scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do agent harness. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-prime-agent
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-prime-agent.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-prime-agent.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/devin-vs-prime-agent.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

Prime Agent scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do agent harness.

- Devin: grade C, 55.7/100, rank #505 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/devin.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/devin.json
- Prime Agent: grade C, 60.5/100, rank #399 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/prime-agent.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/prime-agent.json

## 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:
- Schema & documentation, 80 against 42
- Security & auth, 72 against 50
- Transparency & trust, 69 against 64

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

### Prime Agent (C)

Good for: Long-running research and coding work where one model drives subagents, schedules and goals from code, and where the owner can isolate the machine.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 65 against 30
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 62
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 63

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: No approval prompts and no sandbox. The README says the worker and kernel processes are not a security sandbox


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Devin | Prime Agent | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 65 | Prime Agent +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 42 | Devin +38 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 62 | 73 | Prime Agent +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 72 | 50 | Devin +22 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 60 | Prime Agent +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 79 | Prime Agent +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 64 | Devin +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.7 · C** | **60.5 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Devin | Prime Agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cognition AI, Inc. | Prime Intellect |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.devin.ai/mcp` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of Service | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 13 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-06-30 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-03-09 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | none | 22k stars |

## 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.

**Prime Agent.** Budgets for turns, tokens and time bound an autonomous run, and sessions survive a closed terminal through a supervising daemon. Model-written Python and shell commands run with the user's rights, with no approval step and no sandbox, and the Rust build on the main branch ships only as nightly betas.

## 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

### Prime Agent

1. Run it in a disposable clone, container or VM. It executes model-written Python and shell commands with the user's rights and asks nothing first
2. Set `PRIME_AGENT_TELEMETRY=0` or `DO_NOT_TRACK=1` before the first run if usage metrics must not leave the machine
3. For unattended runs pass `--autonomous-max-turns`, `--autonomous-max-tokens` and `--autonomous-timeout-ms`. Reaching a limit does not mean the task succeeded
4. Headless use is `-p` with `--mode json` per the argument parser. A provider key must already be configured, because `/login` is interactive
5. The `-t/--tools`, `-nt/--no-tools` and `-nbt/--no-builtin-tools` flags were removed and now fail as unknown options

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Devin or Prime Agent?

Prime Agent scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust.

### Are Devin and Prime Agent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Devin. Prime Agent is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Devin or Prime Agent

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