Sinatra vs Devin
Cognition's cloud software engineer. Compared here on Devin Cloud sessions and the Linear integration, not the Devin CLI or Devin Desktop.
Both tools take a Linear ticket and hand back a pull request. The difference is what you pay and what you hold. Devin meters every action in ACUs on Cognition's own models, so a task's cost is knowable only after it runs. Sinatra charges a flat seat and runs on the key or subscription you already have. Devin is the better buy if you want one vendor to own the stack, or if Slack and an editor are how your team actually starts work.
- Yes means the vendor's own app starts a run from the issue itself, with nothing to commit to the repo first. Sinatra's trigger is the Sinatra label that ships with the GitHub App install (`sinatraai` on the hosted app). Partial means either that a workflow file and an API-key secret have to be added per repository first, or that the mention only works on pull requests and not on issues.
- Yes means assigning the ticket to the agent in Linear starts the run. Partial means the run starts some other way: an attachment link you click, or a trigger you configure yourself against Linear's webhooks. Assignment on its own does nothing.
- Yes means a changes-requested review is enough on its own: Sinatra reworks the branch and pushes the follow-up commit with no re-trigger and no mention. Partial means the agent acts only when it is @-mentioned in the thread, or only while its original session is still open.
- Yes means your own provider API key runs the agent everywhere the product runs it. Partial means keys work on some surfaces but not the one being compared here, either because the vendor documents them as local-CLI-and-desktop only, or because it never documents them covering its cloud agent at all.
- Yes means a Claude Pro/Max or ChatGPT subscription you already pay for authenticates the run on the vendor's hosted cloud. Partial means it works only where that CLI's login already sits on the machine: your own laptop or a self-hosted backend, not a clean cloud sandbox.
- Yes means you are never charged a marked-up model rate, either because you pay your provider directly, or because the vendor publishes the same per-token rates the provider does, or because model use is included in a flat plan with a published allowance. Partial means the answer depends on which plan you are on: no fee on the individual tiers, a published per-token fee on the team ones, charged even against your own key.
- Both halves have to be published: the plan price, and the rate for work past the plan. A published seat price sitting on top of an undisclosed credit, compute unit, or quota size is partial.
- Yes means the free tier states its daily allowance as a number. Sinatra's is 5 tasks a day with your own key or a Codex subscription, 1 a day on Sinatra's keys, no card. Partial means a free plan exists but its allowance is not published.
- Yes means you can run without supplying a model key at all, because the vendor bills you for the model.
- Yes means an editor plugin or a desktop app; partial means a terminal CLI and nothing that runs inside an editor. Sinatra has neither, on purpose: the work starts in the tracker and comes back as a pull request. If you want an assistant inside your editor, that is a real reason to pick one of these instead, and several teams run both.
- Sinatra has no Slack trigger. GitHub and Linear are the only two ways to start a run, and a Slack-first team should weigh that.
- Yes means you can run the agent on infrastructure you control, or the source is open. Partial means execution or inference can be pointed at your own account while the product itself stays the vendor's and stays closed. Sinatra is hosted only; there is no self-managed build.
Read off each vendor's own documentation and pricing pages on September 3, 2026.
How you start it
- Add the Sinatra label to a GitHub issue. The label ships with the GitHub App install and is named after the app (
sinatraaion the hosted one) - Assign a Linear ticket to Sinatra, or @-mention it in a comment
- Assign a Linear ticket to Devin, add a playbook label, or @-mention it in a comment
- Tag Devin in a Slack or Teams thread
- The Devin web app
- Devin CLI and Devin Desktop, including JetBrains, Zed, and Xcode over ACP
$20 per member per month for hosted sandboxes and orchestration, with model cost passed through at provider rates and no markup. Free tier: 5 tasks a day with your own key or Codex, 1 a day on ours. No card.
Sinatra pricing →Free, Pro $20/mo, Max $200/mo, and Teams from $80/mo ($40 per full seat, flex seats free). Work is metered in ACUs and on-demand credits; enterprise ACU rates are set in an order form.
Devin pricing page →How you start a task
Devin's Linear path is good, and it is the one place these two products do the same thing the same way: assign the ticket and walk away.
GitHub is where they part. Devin documents no GitHub-issue trigger at all, so a team living in GitHub Issues is comparing a working path against a missing one. Sinatra uses a label there rather than an assignee because GitHub Apps cannot be issue assignees anywhere.
After that both open a branch in a sandbox and finish at a pull request you
review. Sinatra opens its pull request as a draft during the run, reviews its own
diff, runs your test_command, and marks it ready when the suite is green.
What it costs, in dollars
The plan prices above are clear enough. What is not published is how far they go: Devin's docs describe "a daily and weekly usage quota" without a number, and consumption is metered by how many actions the agent takes plus VM time and bandwidth. That is a fair way to bill for compute and an impossible one to forecast from a ticket. Two tickets that look identical to whoever wrote them can cost very different amounts, and you find out afterwards.
Sinatra's bill has two numbers and both are published: $20 per member per month, and your provider's own rate for tokens on your provider's invoice. Or nothing at all, if the credential you connect is a subscription you were already paying for.
Where Sinatra wins
You keep the model relationship. Your Anthropic key, your OpenRouter key, your Claude or ChatGPT plan, running the hosted task. Devin has no customer-supplied-key path documented anywhere.
GitHub Issues is a real trigger here, which for a backlog that lives in GitHub is the difference between adopting the tool and not. And review feedback needs no re-trigger: request changes and Sinatra pushes the follow-up commit. Devin answers PR comments automatically too, but only while its session is unarchived. After that the thread goes quiet.
Where Devin wins
Devin is the bigger product, and some of what it does Sinatra has decided not to do at all.
Slack and Teams come first. Tag Devin in the thread where the bug is being discussed and it picks the work up there. Sinatra has no Slack trigger today, so if that is where work surfaces, Devin fits better.
Devin is also in your editor, with a CLI, a desktop app, and JetBrains, Zed, and Xcode over ACP. Sinatra has none of that and never will; it runs in the tracker and returns a pull request. Devin also owns the models, the harness, the sandboxes, and the billing, which is a real advantage if you would rather have one throat to choke than two invoices. And Ask Devin and DeepWiki answer questions about a repository, which is a different job from closing a ticket and one Sinatra does not attempt.
Looking for a Devin alternative?
Two things usually bring people here: a credit bill that grew faster than the work did, or a backlog in GitHub that Devin cannot see.
For the bill, the change is that the model line stops being a Devin line item. You bring the key or the subscription, Sinatra charges $20 per member per month for the sandbox and the orchestration, and token spend lands on your provider's invoice at their rate. For the trigger, the change is a label on a GitHub issue.
If neither is your problem, and what you want is an agent in Slack and in your editor, Devin is a good product and you should keep it.
Switching, or running both
Nothing to migrate. Both open their own branch and their own pull request, and
neither writes to main. Run them side by side on the same board for two weeks
on Sinatra's free tier, which is 5 tasks a day with your own key or Codex, 1 a day on ours. No card. Give each the kind of ticket you
would delegate to a person, then compare the diffs and the two invoices.
Questions people ask about Devin and Sinatra
Is Sinatra cheaper than Devin?
It depends on volume. Devin's Pro plan is $20 a month for one person with a quota that is not published as a number; Sinatra is $20 per member plus what your provider charges you directly, which on a Claude Max or ChatGPT plan you already hold can be nothing.
Can Devin start from a GitHub issue?
Not as a documented trigger. Devin documents the web app, Slack or Teams, the CLI, and Linear; Sinatra's GitHub entry point is the label that ships with its App install.
Can I use my own Anthropic or OpenAI key with Devin?
Devin's CLI lets you pick a model family, but every call is billed by Cognition against your plan, and no customer-supplied provider key appears in its documentation.
Can we run both?
Yes, and plenty of teams should. They overlap on Linear and almost nowhere else: Devin is strongest as an assistant you talk to, Sinatra as an unattended worker on tickets already written down.
Where these facts came from
Every mark on this page was read off Devin's own documentation and pricing pages on September 3, 2026, not from a third-party roundup. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix the page.