GILD verdict
Choose Copilot's cloud agent if your code is on GitHub and agent changes must arrive as draft pull requests a human merges.
Choose Devin if repositories also live on GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps, if work starts in Slack or Linear across teams, or if you need a dedicated deployment. Copilot costs US$19 per Business seat with pooled AI credits, against Devin's US$40 full seat. Run both on the same scoped tickets and compare merged pull requests against spend.
Hosting and guardrails decide this one, because reviewers merge both agents' work at the same rate. In an academic study of public GitHub pull requests presented at MSR 2026, reviewers merged 68.0% of each agent's pull requests over the same 11 weeks of 2025. Both take a task from an issue, a chat thread, or a ticket, work in a cloud environment, and return a pull request for human review.
Choosing between Devin and GitHub Copilot
Choose Devin if
- Your repositories are on GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps as well as GitHub.
- Engineers want to watch or take over a session in its shell, IDE, and browser.
- You need sessions in a single-tenant VPC or on machines you operate.
Choose GitHub Copilot if
- Your code is on GitHub and you want agent usage inside the US$19 Business seat, with 1,900 AI credits per user pooled across the organization.
- You want CodeQL, secret scanning, and dependency checks run on the agent's code before the pull request is ready.
- You want agent pull requests held as drafts, with workflows paused until someone with write access approves them.
Side by side
| Dimension | Devin | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Where work runs | Its own Cognition-hosted machine per session; Outposts workers you operate on Pro, Max, and Teams; a single-tenant VPC on Enterprise | An ephemeral cloud development environment on GitHub |
| Repository hosts | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps | GitHub only; one repository and one pull request per task |
| Where tasks start | Web app, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear, Jira, /devin pull request comments, the API, and CLI handoff | GitHub.com agents panel, chat, issues and pull requests, plus Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear, Jira, and Azure Boards |
| Team priceList prices in US dollars. Devin measures included usage as quota and credits, Copilot as AI credits, so included usage is not directly comparable. | Teams: US$40 per full seat per month, US$80 monthly minimum | Business: US$19 per granted seat per month, with 1,900 AI credits per user pooled across the organization |
| Beyond the plan | Prepaid on-demand credits that roll over; Enterprise ACUs at the order-form rate | Additional usage at US$0.01 per AI credit, on by default until an admin turns it off |
| Session time | Sleeps after 30 idle minutes and wakes on the next message | Each cloud agent session stops at 59 minutes |
| Pull request safeguards | Follows your branch protections; pull requests can open under the requesting user's name | Draft pull requests that a human must merge; the requester cannot approve, and workflows wait for approval |
| Pull request review | Devin Review, free on public GitHub pull requests | Copilot code review |
| Pull requests merged (MSR 2026 study)Public GitHub repositories with at least 100 stars, closed pull requests that someone other than the author reviewed. Researchers at the University of Trieste, King's College London, and University College London ran the study. | 61.6% of 2,252 over 32 weeks from December 2024; 68.0% in the 11 weeks both agents shared; 45.6% of bug fixes13 | 68.0% of 2,194 over 11 weeks from May 202513 |
What practitioners report, side by side
Each product's figures come from its own practitioners, for the group you pick.
Overall signal
Leaders and teams rate Devin +43, 32 points above GitHub Copilot at +11. Most of the gap is in praise, with 14 of Devin's 26 sources positive against 9 of GitHub Copilot's 32. Devin has 6 negative and GitHub Copilot 8.
The score counts the sources from leaders and teams that take a side and is how far positive votes lead negative ones, per 100 votes. A confirmed leader casts three votes, another confirmed practitioner two and any other source one, so Devin's +43 rests on votes split 29 positive, 8 mixed and 9 negative and GitHub Copilot's +11 on 16, 27 and 10. A lead of a fifth of the votes reads positive and a lead of half strong positive, with the same lines below zero. The dots show each source once, positive, mixed, negative. Use a task pilot to measure accepted work and review time.
Footprint on the Agentic Software Development stack
They differ on four of 12 layers. Devin owns one that GitHub Copilot does not, and GitHub Copilot owns two that Devin does not. Coverage is each product's placement on this stack, as its product page shows it. Core is a job the product owns; Supports and Touches are jobs it helps with. Coverage says nothing about how well a product does them.
| Layer | Devin | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Build | ||
| Agent runtime | Supports | Core |
| Tool execution | Core | Supports |
| Validate | ||
| Code review | Supports | Core |
| Ship | ||
| Source control | Touches | Supports |
The 8 layers where they match
| Layer | Devin | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | ||
| Work planning | Supports | Supports |
| Build | ||
| Codebase context | Supports | Supports |
| Coding | Core | Core |
| Validate | ||
| Debugging | Supports | Supports |
| Testing | Supports | Supports |
| Application security | Supports | Supports |
| Ship | ||
| CI/CD | Touches | Touches |
| Operate | ||
| Observability | Touches | Touches |
What practitioners praise
Among leaders and teams, Devin alone has four praise themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Codebase understanding and Async delegation lead, at 11 of 11 and 8 of 8. Enterprise Administration reaches 5 sources from 3 authors only for GitHub Copilot, at 3 of 7. Devin needs a pilot on the same repository tasks before you choose on it.
| Praised for | Devin | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Codebase understanding | 11 of 11 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Async delegation | 8 of 8 | Not a theme in its sources |
| End-to-end execution | 7 of 9 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Developer experience | 5 of 7 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Enterprise Administration | Not a theme in its sources | 3 of 7 |
Each count is the sources that praise a theme, or raise it as a concern, out of those that discuss it. A row pairs the two products when both carry a theme under the same or an equivalent name. A count ending in "so far" has under 5 sources from 3 authors among leaders and teams. "Not a theme in its sources" means GILD found no theme of that name in that product's sources.
What practitioners raise as concerns
Among leaders and teams, GitHub Copilot alone has four concern themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Measuring Impact and Usage / Cost lead, at 5 of 13 and 3 of 7. Both carry Requires strong review. It is raised in 7 of the 8 Devin sources that discuss it, against 5 of 7 for GitHub Copilot. Unpredictable task success reaches 5 sources from 3 authors only for Devin, at 4 of 7. GitHub Copilot needs a pilot on the same repository tasks before you choose on it.
| Raised as a concern | Devin | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Requires strong review | 7 of 8 | 5 of 7 |
| Unpredictable task success | 4 of 7 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Measuring Impact | Not a theme in its sources | 5 of 13 |
| Usage / Cost | 3 of 4 so far | 3 of 7 |
| Quality Against Alternatives | Not a theme in its sources | 3 of 7 |
| Data, IP & Security | Not a theme in its sources | 2 of 6 |
13 sources
- Devin docs: Getting started with Devin Enterprise (SSO)
- Devin docs: Self-serve plans
- Devin docs: Usage
- Devin docs: Integrations overview
- Devin docs: GitHub integration
- Devin docs: Devin Review
- Devin docs: Enterprise deployment
- GitHub Copilot docs: Plans
- GitHub Copilot docs: Usage-based billing for organizations and enterprises
- GitHub Copilot docs: Copilot on GitHub.com
- GitHub Copilot docs: Risks and mitigations for Copilot cloud agent
- GitHub Copilot docs: About Copilot integrations
- Pinna, Gong, Williams, and Sarro, MSR 2026: Comparing AI Coding Agents: A Task-Stratified Analysis of Pull Request Acceptance (Feb 9, 2026)