Windsurf costs $15 per month for the Pro plan, undercutting Cursor’s standard $20 price point while offering a distinctively different “agentic” experience. If Cursor is the frantic genius that types faster than you can think, Windsurf is the senior engineer who pauses to read the entire documentation before writing a single line. It handles the heavy lifting of refactoring and multi-file architecture changes through “Cascade,” an agentic flow that feels less like a chat bot and more like an autonomous coworker.
For a developer refactoring a messy Python backend, Windsurf’s value becomes obvious. You don’t just ask it to “fix the bug”; you point it at a vague error log, and Cascade traces the stack, opens the relevant files, and proposes a fix that accounts for three different dependencies. It processes deep context with less hallucination than standard copilots, largely due to its “flow” architecture which maintains state better than a simple context window.
However, the tool’s recent history is messy. Following the bizarre July 2025 split where Google hired the founders but Cognition (creators of Devin) bought the product, the roadmap feels slightly unstable. While the $15/month price is attractive—saving you $60/year compared to Cursor—the “thinking” pauses in Cascade can break your rhythm if you just want a quick regex fix. The inference speed on deep reasoning tasks (powered by models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet) is noticeably slower than Cursor’s “fast” mode.
The integration with VS Code is seamless because it is a VS Code fork. You install it, import your extensions, and keep working. The zero-data retention policy by default is a major win for enterprise users who are paranoid about their IP training the next version of GPT.
Skip Windsurf if you primarily need a “tab-autocomplete” speed demon; Cursor or GitHub Copilot are snappier for simple boilerplate. But if you spend your days untangling legacy code or architecting complex systems where one change breaks five others, Windsurf’s Cascade is worth the slightly slower pace and the corporate drama. It’s the best tool right now for “deep work” coding.
Pricing
The Free tier is a trap: 25 prompt credits/month is barely enough for one morning of debugging. You will hit the wall immediately. The real product is the $15/month Pro plan, which offers 500 "premium" credits (using models like GPT-4o or Claude 3.7) and unlimited "Tab" autocomplete.
Compared to Cursor ($20/mo), Windsurf saves you $5/month. However, hidden costs lurk in the "Cascade" agentic flows—complex multi-step reasoning burns credits faster than simple chat. If you rely heavily on the agent features, you might burn through your 500 credits and need top-ups, narrowing the price gap.
Technical Verdict
Windsurf is a polished VS Code fork, so the migration friction is near zero—your keybindings and extensions just work. The SDK/API surface is minimal since it's an IDE, but the "Cascade" flow is the technical marvel here, capable of executing terminal commands and tracking state across file edits. Latency is higher than Cursor during "thinking" steps, often taking 5-10 seconds to plan a complex refactor.
Quick Start
# No SDK install needed; this is an IDE.
# 1. Download from windsurf.ai
# 2. Open Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P)
# 3. Type "Windsurf: Open Cascade"
# 4. Prompt: "Refactor this class to use a factory pattern"
print("Windsurf operates as a standalone editor, not a library.")Watch Out
- The 2025 acquisition by Cognition (while founders went to Google) creates long-term roadmap uncertainty.
- 25 free credits is useless; you effectively cannot use the product without paying $15.
- Cascade's "reasoning" steps can be frustratingly slow (5-10s) for simple tasks.