Cognition, the company behind the popular AI programming tool Devin, has launched a new affordable plan to encourage sign-ups.

Following its release last year, Devin quickly gained attention on social media for its ability to automate certain software development tasks. However, it soon became clear that the tool encountered difficulties with more complex coding projects. Despite this, Devin received praise from AI industry leaders, including Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, which significantly raised Cognition’s profile.

Devin was initially made available to teams at a cost of $500 per month. On Thursday, just weeks after Cognition reportedly secured hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, the company introduced an entry-level option priced at $20, which then transitions to a pay-as-you-go plan.

The pay-as-you-go plan may prove costly, depending on usage. The initial $20 provides approximately 9 ACUs (computing credits), with each ACU costing $2.25 on the $20 plan, up from $2 on the $500-per-month subscription. According to Cognition, 15 minutes of “active Devin work” is equivalent to around 1 ACU; 9 ACUs would provide roughly 2.25 hours of work, which may not be sufficient for large codebases.

However, Cognition claims that the current version of Devin, Devin 2.0, has undergone significant improvements since its December release. Similar to GitHub’s Copilot tool, Devin can now assist with generating plans for coding projects, answering code-related questions with citations, and creating “wikis” for code with documentation.

Silas Alberti, a member of Devin’s development team, told TechCrunch that the tool now “accomplishes twice as much work as before.”

It is essential to approach these claims with caution. Even the most advanced code-generating AI tools can introduce security vulnerabilities and bugs, research has shown, due to limitations in areas such as understanding programming logic. A recent evaluation of Devin found that it successfully completed only three out of 20 tasks, highlighting the need for further improvement.