Cognition AI launches revamped coding assistant Devin 2.0 with much lower starting price

Cognition AI Inc., creator of the generative artificial intelligence-powered coding bot Devin, today announced a new version of that tool with more powerful capabilities, and it’s available at a much lower cost than before.

It was just over a year ago that Cognition AI took the coding world by storm with the release of Devin, which far surpassed AI coding assistants such as GitHub Inc.’s Copilot. Unlike existing coding bots, which could only assist human developers, Devin was touted as being able to autonomously create the codebase of entire applications, including new AI models.

Devin went viral, with its ability to transform a natural language prompt into a full-blown application, writing its own code, testing and reporting on its progress in real time. Some analysts said it marked the dawn of a new era where software creates software, with the role of human programmers limited to supervising its work.

However, it soon became apparent that Devin wasn’t all that it cracked up to be, struggling with more complex coding tasks, and reports of buggy code that didn’t always work as it was supposed to.

Devin was also extremely expensive, priced at $500 per user per month. Moreover, many rival offerings with similar functionality emerged in its wake, with GitHub’s Copilot getting more autonomy, alongside offerings like Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Developer Q, Magic AI Inc,’s LTM-2-mini and Codeium Inc.’s Windsurf.

Lower starting price

Given those realities, Devin’s adoption stalled, but Cognition AI is now hitting back. With the launch of Devin 2.0 in beta test today, the company has rolled out a new pricing plan that starts at just $20 per month, transitioning to a pay-as-you-go model afterwards. It also introduces a range of capabilities that aim to streamline collaboration between developers and Devin and increase productivity.

Whether the new pricing plan substantially lowers the overall costs remains to be seen, though. For the starting price of $20, customers gain access to 9 ACUs, which is the company’s name for credits. That means users are paying $2.25 per ACU, as compared to the $2 they were paying under the original $500 per month subscription.

According to Cognition AI, one ACU equates to 15 minutes of “active work,” so that translates to a cost of $11 per hour – not so different from what a freelance human developer on a platform such as Upwork might charge.

Of course, the advantage of Devin 2.0 is that it can work much more quickly than any human programmer can, and with today’s update it is far more capable than the original version. For instance, it’s now able to help create plans for coding projects, answer questions about its code with citations, and even create a “wiki” for the code it generates.

New capabilities

One major change is the introduction of a cloud-hosted Integrated Development Environment or IDE, which enables multiple Devins to be operated at once, with each one handling a different task. The idea is that the human user simply sits there and oversees what the Devins are doing, stepping in when required.

According to the startup, this feature can help companies to better organize their programming teams, giving them greater flexibility.

Another intriguing feature is Devin 2.0’s new Interactive Planning tool, which allows human users to outline a nebulous idea. Devin then takes over, fleshing out hazy concepts to create a detailed plan of action that allows it to be brought to life.

Devin’s new analytics capabilities should come in handy too. Among other things, it can analyze an entire codebase, identify the relevant files within it, and then propose action plans to correct or improve the code – all without human input.

In addition, there’s a new Devin Search feature, which allows for deeper exploration of code, while the Devin Wiki tool will help teams to ensure each codebase is thoroughly documented and kept up to date. The idea is that these features can help teams to keep a lid on the chaos that typically emerges with large-scale software projects.

The big question is whether these changes will help Devin and Cognition AI regain their viral mojo in an area that has seen significant advances over the intervening months.

Although Devin positions itself as a platform for accelerating developer workflows, the reality has been somewhat different. There have been numerous reports of Devin struggling to get to grips with more complex codebases, as well as inconsistent performance and the inclusion of unnecessary abstractions.

Of course, Cognition AI will argue these are standard growing pains for a new technology, and with its lower entry price and improved functionality, it will be hopeful of encouraging further uptake of Devin in the enterprise. But we can expect its rivals to keep pace with these developments and introduce their own innovations, too.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said Cognition AI has lost a lot of momentum in recent months from some of the quality issues that surfaced with the original Devin.

“To try to regain that lost ground, it’s back at it and expanding Devin 2.0’s scope,” the analyst said. “It’s not certain if Devin 2.0 can win over more developers, but we know that the real winners will be those who develop reliable tools that can significantly boost developer velocity. We’ll see soon enough if it can do that.”

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