OpenHands AI agent features vs Devin vs Manus (2026): which should you use?

OpenHands, Devin and Manus are all called AI agents, but they solve different problems. OpenHands is a free, open-source coding agent platform you host yourself with any model. Devin is Cognition's paid AI software engineer, now bundled with the former Windsurf editor. Manus is a general-purpose agent for research, slides, websites and automations, not a coding tool first.

I think that split matters more than any benchmark. This comparison of OpenHands AI agent features vs Devin vs Manus covers deployment, pricing, models, published benchmarks and ideal users. It's based on official pricing and product pages, company announcements and published third-party reviews, as of late October 2026. No one at The AI Future ran hands-on tests for this piece.

All three companies changed in the past year. Cognition turned Windsurf into Devin Desktop. Manus was bought by Meta, then split away again after Chinese regulators intervened. OpenHands moved to a self-hosted "Agent Canvas" model. If you're new to the category, our explainer on what agentic AI is covers the basics.

Quick verdict: who wins for which use case

• Pick OpenHands if you're a developer or engineering team that wants full control. It's MIT-licensed, self-hosted and works with any LLM, including open-weight models.
• Pick Devin if you want a polished, managed coding product with an IDE, cloud agents and enterprise support. It costs from $20 a month for individuals.
• Pick Manus if you're not mainly writing code. It handles research, reports, slides, websites, video and event-triggered automations from one chat.

Our take: OpenHands and Devin compete directly. Manus probably overlaps only at the edges, mainly in building simple web apps.

Side-by-side comparison table

Ownership and status in 2026

OpenHands

OpenHands began as OpenDevin, an open-source answer to Devin. Its GitHub repository showed about 92,300 stars on 31 October 2026. A review first published on aifoss.dev reports that the company raised an $18.8 million Series A led by Madrona in November 2025.

The product has shifted. The project README now describes Agent Canvas as "the self-hosted developer control center for coding agents and automations." It can run the OpenHands agent or third-party agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI.

Devin

Cognition remains independent and well funded. The company says it raised over $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. It later announced it had crossed $1 billion in annualised revenue run rate.

The bigger product change came in mid-2026. Cognition announced Devin Desktop as "the next generation of Windsurf", its AI code editor. The Agent Command Center is now the default screen.

Manus

Manus has had the most turbulent year. Meta agreed to buy it in December 2025, in a deal TechRadar reported was worth more than $2 billion, citing The Wall Street Journal.

The deal didn't last. According to The Next Web, Beijing opened an investigation in early 2026 and by April had forbidden foreign investment in Manus. Meta didn't contest it.

Manus told users in August that some data created on or after 29 December 2025 would be deleted to comply with regulatory requirements, with a backup and restore tool. On 1 September 2026 it said it had formally resumed independent operations, led by its founding team. It shipped Manus 2.0 on 28 September 2026.

Features compared

Deployment and where the agent runs

OpenHands runs where you put it. The README says Agent Canvas runs locally by default but can connect to agents in Docker containers, on VMs or inside company infrastructure. Every plan on the pricing page, including Enterprise, is listed as self-hosted. The README warns that running without a sandbox gives the agent "full access to your filesystem".

Devin spans several surfaces. A DEV Community guide lists Devin Desktop, Devin Cloud, Devin CLI and Devin Review. Cloud sessions run in an isolated VM with a browser, shell and editor, then return a pull request. Per the pricing page, VPC deployment is an Enterprise feature.

Manus is a hosted product used through web, desktop and mobile apps. With 2.0, the desktop app became Manus Studio, and users can buy a dedicated Cloud Computer for projects that must stay online.

Models and flexibility

OpenHands is model-agnostic. Its homepage says it "runs both closed models and open weights like Kimi, DeepSeek, and Qwen". You pay your model provider directly.

Devin Pro includes access to "frontier models from OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and SpaceXAI, plus leading open source models", according to its pricing page. Cognition also offers its own SWE-2 model, which it says is post-trained from Kimi K3. A routing layer called Devin Fusion pairs a frontier model with a cheaper "sidekick" model to cut cost.

Manus picks models for you by default. Since September, Manus Flex lets you connect your own API key from partners including OpenRouter, Fireworks and Modal. Model inference is then billed by that provider, while other Manus services still use credits.

Automations and integrations

All three now push agents that start work on their own. OpenHands triggers workflows from GitHub, Slack, Jira, Linear and schedules, and connects internal tools through MCP. Cognition describes Devin Automations that start from events in Slack, GitHub and Linear, plus Auto-Triage for incidents. Manus 2.0 Automations start tasks from a new email, a calendar event, a Slack message or a Notion update.

Both OpenHands and Devin Desktop support the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), so you can run outside agents such as Codex or Claude inside them. See our Cursor review for how a rival editor handles the same idea.

Benchmarks, with caveats

There's no shared, independent benchmark covering all three. Each company publishes its own numbers on different tests, so they aren't directly comparable.

• OpenHands: In April 2025, the team reported 60.6% on SWE-bench Verified with a single attempt, and 66.4% with five attempts and a trained critic model. The aifoss.dev review lists 68.4% for OpenHands with CodeAct v3 and Claude Opus 4.6. The team also runs the OpenHands Index, which scores models across five task types.
• Devin: Cognition says SWE-2 scores 50.0% on FrontierCode 1.1 Main and 73.0% on DeepSWE 1.1. FrontierCode is Cognition's own benchmark. It claims Fusion is up to 60% cheaper at similar performance on the same test.
• Manus: The company hasn't published a coding benchmark for 2.0. It says its new Cascade system used 23.2% fewer tokens, finished tasks in 28.2% less time and cost 32% less "in one tested configuration".

Our take: OpenHands' scores depend heavily on the model you plug in. I'd treat every vendor figure as a starting point, not a verdict.

Quality of output: same prompts, side by side

The AI Future didn't run these tools on identical prompts for this article, so there are no first-hand output samples here. Instead, below are three typical tasks and how each product is designed to handle them, based on official documentation. You can use them as a test plan during free trials.

The pattern seems clear. OpenHands and Devin aim at existing codebases and pull requests. Manus aims at finished deliverables for people who don't want to touch code.

Pricing compared

Prices below were checked on official pages in October 2026. All are in US dollars and exclude tax.

Sources: OpenHands pricing, Devin pricing, Manus Help Center and MyClaw for the $200 Manus tier.

The headline prices hide different cost models, and that $500 team price for free software surprised me. With OpenHands, your main cost is LLM API usage, which you pay to your provider. Devin's paid plans include a usage allowance that refreshes daily and weekly, and extra usage is billed at API pricing. Manus charges in credits, and a Cloud Computer costs an extra $30 or $50 a month, according to MyClaw.

Reviewers and users on each

OpenHands

The aifoss.dev review is blunt about model choice: "With Claude Opus 4.6 behind it, OpenHands is the strongest open-source coding agent you can self-host today. With a 7B local model, it's a tech demo." The same review flags heavier setup and a Docker requirement for sandboxing.

Devin

A DEV Community guide by Hassan sums up the Windsurf change: "Windsurf was an IDE with AI features. Devin Desktop is an IDE centered around managing local and cloud agents." It notes that existing Windsurf plans, settings and extensions carried over without a migration step.

Manus

Writing about the Meta split, The Next Web recalled the original launch: "Manus arrived in March 2025 with something people had not seen work before." A German-language MyClaw review of Manus 2.0 called it worthwhile if you want to edit what the agent creates, but noted that the efficiency gains rest on Manus's own figures and that credit use still needs watching.

Choosing between them

Choose OpenHands if you want control

It suits engineering teams with security or data-residency needs, and developers who want to use open-weight models. You'll need to be comfortable with Docker, API keys and self-hosting. Our guide on how to create an AI agent covers the setup concepts.

Choose Devin if you want a managed coding product

I'd say it suits individual developers who want an IDE plus cloud agents for $20 a month, and enterprises that need support, SSO and VPC options. Former Windsurf users already have it.

Choose Manus if your work isn't mainly code

It suits founders, analysts, marketers and creators who want reports, slides, sites and video from prompts. Given the history above, I'd check the data handling before moving sensitive work into it. For a wider field, see our Manus vs other AI agents comparison.

What happens next: All three are moving toward always-on agents that start work from events. I'd expect more pricing changes as model costs fall. For the bigger picture on what this means for workers, read AI agents at work.

FAQ

Is OpenHands really free?

The software is free and MIT-licensed, and the single-user Agent Canvas plan costs nothing. You still pay for the LLM you connect, unless you run an open-weight model on your own hardware. Team features such as SSO and role-based access start at $500 a month, per the OpenHands pricing page.

Is Devin the same as Windsurf now?

Largely, yes. Cognition describes Devin Desktop as the next generation of Windsurf and says it remains fully backwards-compatible with it. Devin also includes cloud agents, a CLI and code review tools that go beyond the old editor.

Who owns Manus in 2026?

Manus is independent again. Meta agreed to buy it in December 2025, but Chinese regulators blocked foreign investment, according to The Next Web. Manus announced on 1 September 2026 that it had resumed independent operations under its founding team.

Can I build my own AI agent with these tools?

OpenHands is the most flexible for that. It offers an open-source agent, a Software Agent SDK and automations you can customise and self-host. Devin and Manus let you configure automations and connectors, but not change the agent itself. Our guide to building AI agents covers the steps.

Which is best for non-developers?

Manus. It works from plain-language prompts and produces finished slides, websites, reports and videos. OpenHands and Devin assume you can read code and review pull requests.

Can any of them build a voice AI agent?

None of the three is a voice-agent platform. A coding agent like OpenHands or Devin can help you write the code for one. Manus added an ElevenLabs connector for voice generation, which is different from a live phone or voice assistant.