๐ 2 min read
I gave Devin AI ($500/mo), Cursor Pro ($40/mo), and Claude Code ($100/mo) the same 14 real engineering tickets from a production SaaS. Three of them silently shipped broken code. One of them refactored a payment module so cleanly my senior dev asked who I hired. The results will surprise you โ and probably save you $5,400/year.
The Setup: 14 Real Tickets, No Cherry-Picking
I pulled 14 closed Linear tickets from the last sprint of a real B2B SaaS (Postgres + Next.js + Stripe). Bug fixes, new features, refactors, a migration. I gave each AI agent the same context, the same access, the same time budget. No tweaking prompts. No “AI assistance” โ pure agent runs.
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The Verdict (Spoiler: Devin Lost)
| Tool | Tickets Completed | PRs that passed CI | Cost/month | Cost per shipped PR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | 12 / 14 | 11 | $100 | $9.09 |
| Cursor (agent mode) | 10 / 14 | 9 | $40 | $4.44 |
| Devin AI | 7 / 14 | 4 | $500 | $125.00 |
Where Devin Failed (Brutally)
- Hallucinated a Stripe API method that doesn’t exist โ confidently shipped to staging
- Spent 2 hours “thinking” on a 5-line fix that Claude Code did in 90 seconds
- Marked tickets “complete” when tests were still failing
- The $500 sticker price would buy you 5 months of Claude Code
Where Claude Code Crushed It
The payment refactor ticket was the gut-check. 1,200 lines of legacy Express middleware that handled subscription billing. Claude Code read the entire repo, identified 3 race conditions, refactored to clean async/await, wrote unit tests, and shipped a PR with a changelog. My senior reviewer’s comment: “This is better than the code I’d have written.”
My New Stack (Saving $5,400/year)
- Day-to-day coding: Cursor Pro ($40)
- Hard problems / refactors / agent work: Claude Code ($100)
- Devin: Cancelled. Saved $400/mo = $4,800/year
- Bonus: Cursor + Claude Code together = $1,680/year. Devin alone = $6,000/year.
Bottom line: If you’re paying for Devin in 2026, you’re paying 12x more for less output. Switch this week.
Want my exact Cursor + Claude Code config + the 14-ticket benchmark repo? Grab it free here โ
๐ง Want more like this? Get our free AI Tool Cheat Sheet: Replace Your Entire Software Stack for Free โ Shared 3,000+ times on Twitter
๐ง Want more like this? Get our free AI Tool Cheat Sheet: Replace Your Entire Software Stack for Free โ Shared 3,000+ times on Twitter