Devin vs Stagehand
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Devin and Stagehand.
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Verdict: Stagehand wins
Stagehand scores 4.2/5, edging out Devin at 3.9/5. Engineers building production browser agents who want natural-language actions with a Playwright escape hatch and can tolerate per-action LLM costs.
Devin The first AI software engineer | Stagehand Browser automation for complex web tasks using AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 3.9 (1 review) | 4.2 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | paid | free |
| Starting Price | From $500/mo | Free |
| Best For | Engineering teams with a well-groomed backlog who want to delegate complete, precisely-specified tasks to an autonomous agent and keep humans on review. | Engineers building production browser agents who want natural-language actions with a Playwright escape hatch and can tolerate per-action LLM costs. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | team features | free tieropen sourceapi access |
| Visit Devin → | Visit Stagehand → |
Devin
Pros
- + On well-specified tickets (flaky-test fix, CRUD endpoint with tests) it returned clean, convention-matching PRs I merged with light review — real time savings at $20/month
- + Sandboxed execution with test iteration is the difference from chat-based assistants: it validates its own work before opening the PR
- + Devin Review's free public-PR review at devinreview.com works without an account and is a useful standalone surface
- + Broad workflow integration — Slack, Teams, Linear, Jira, GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket, MCP — plus automations for recurring tasks
- + Transparent plan ladder now ($0/$20/$200, Teams $80 minimum + $40/full seat) instead of the flat $500 launch price
Cons
- - Output quality tracks spec quality almost linearly: a vague refactor ticket produced an over-scoped PR I had to close and rewrite
- - Credit drift is real — automation runs and sandbox troubleshooting consume quota invisibly, and out-of-quota usage bills at API pricing
- - It implements bad tickets without pushback; review is mandatory for security-sensitive or migration work
- - Enterprise controls (VPC, SSO, dedicated support) are sales-gated, and the product surface is reshaping around the Windsurf acquisition
Stagehand
Pros
- + MIT-licensed SDK runs locally against any Chromium browser; in my test the act() call re-resolved after I rewrote a login button's classes and wrappers, while my hand-written Playwright selector broke
- + extract() returns schema-validated typed data (pydantic/Zod/struct) — pulling an invoice table into typed fields removed the JSON cleanup step entirely
- + observe() hands back real selectors, so I filled login credentials with ordinary Playwright calls and the secrets never reached the model
- + Full TypeScript, Python and Go support from one monorepo, with deep locators that reached nested iframes and a closed shadow DOM in my runs
- + Token cost per action is a fraction of screenshot-driven agents I have tested, because page context is a trimmed accessibility tree rather than images
Cons
- - Every act/extract/observe call is an LLM round trip — my ten-step workflow ran noticeably slower than the equivalent pure Playwright script
- - Code-only: no recorder or visual builder, so non-programmers cannot build or maintain automations
- - Anti-bot features (stealth, residential proxies, verified sessions) live in paid Browserbase plans, not the free SDK
- - Pages with canvas-rendered or heavily obfuscated UIs leave the accessibility tree thin and the AI primitives degrade
- - v4 is still moving fast; I pin versions because major upgrades have meant migration work
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Devin or Stagehand?▼
Stagehand scores higher at 4.2/5 vs 3.9/5 for Devin, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Devin and Stagehand?▼
Devin: Devin is an autonomous coding agent from Cognition that plans work, writes and runs code and opens pull requests, working as a cloud agent alongside an engineering team. Stagehand: Stagehand is an SDK for building browser agents, with a Playwright-style API and selectors that repair themselves when a page changes, in TypeScript, Python and Go.
Is Devin or Stagehand more affordable?▼
Devin starts at €500/mo, Stagehand starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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