Cursor vs Windsurf

When to pick Cursor

• You are already on VS Code and want to add agentic AI without migrating extensions, keybindings, or settings — Cursor is a drop-in replacement.
• Your team needs automated pull-request review: Bugbot on the Teams plan ($40/user/mo) runs agentic code review directly on PRs, a feature Windsurf does not offer.
• You want maximum model flexibility in a single editor — Cursor lets you switch between Claude Sonnet, GPT-4o, Gemini, and xAI models per conversation, with credit-pool billing so every dollar goes toward actual model usage.

When to pick Windsurf

• You want the lower entry price: Windsurf Pro is $15/month versus Cursor Pro at $20/month, and the proprietary SWE-1-mini model consumes zero credits, stretching your monthly quota further.
• Your work involves deep multi-step agentic sessions — Cascade’s Codemaps build structural dependency graphs of the project, giving the agent project-wide reasoning that reduces hallucinated imports or missing file references.
• You develop on JetBrains tools (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm) and cannot switch to a standalone editor — Windsurf’s plugin covers 40+ IDEs, while Cursor requires using its own editor binary.

Bottom line

Both tools are VS Code-based agentic IDEs with free tiers, frontier model access, and broadly similar feature sets — the differences are at the margins. Windsurf is the better default for cost-sensitive developers and anyone on JetBrains, and its Cascade engine is the stronger choice for plan-and-execute agentic flows. Cursor is the better fit for VS Code teams that want Bugbot PR review, higher credit ceilings on Pro+ ($60/mo) and Ultra ($200/mo), and a more established Teams plan with SAML/OIDC SSO and centralized billing. Note that Windsurf is mid-rebrand to Devin Desktop following Cognition’s 2026 acquisition of Codeium — windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai, which may affect long-term product direction.