Cognition, the startup behind the popular AI programming tool Devin, has launched a new low-cost subscription plan to encourage user signups. Since its debut last year, Devin quickly gained traction on social media for its capability to autonomously handle specific software development tasks. However, it soon became clear that Devin faced challenges with more complex coding assignments. Despite this, the tool received endorsements from notable figures in the AI sector, including Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, which significantly boosted Cognition’s visibility.
Initially, Devin was available to teams at a steep price of $500 per month. On Thursday, following reports of the company securing hundreds of millions in new funding, Cognition unveiled entry-level pricing at $20, which transitions to a pay-as-you-go model thereafter.
This pay-as-you-go structure could become expensive, depending on the usage patterns with Devin. The starting $20 grants approximately 9 ACUs (Application Computing Units), Cognition’s unit for computing credits. Under this plan, each ACU costs $2.25, a premium compared to the $2 per ACU in the $500 monthly subscription. Cognition estimates that 15 minutes of “active Devin work” equals about 1 ACU, meaning that 9 ACUs would only provide around 2.25 hours of productivity — a relatively short duration for extensive codebases.
Cognition asserts that Devin 2.0 has made significant improvements since its initial release in December. Similar to GitHub’s Copilot, the upgraded tool is now capable of generating project plans, answering coding questions with references, and creating detailed documentation wikis for code.
Silas Alberti, a member of Devin’s development team, mentioned to TechCrunch that the tool now accomplishes “twice as much work as before.” However, such claims should be approached with caution. Studies reveal that even the most advanced code-generating AI currently tends to introduce security flaws and bugs due to limitations in their understanding of programming logic. A recent assessment of Devin indicated it successfully completed only 3 out of 20 tasks.
