Windsurf
AI IDE built around the Cascade agent. Now owned by Cognition, and its windsurf.com URL resolves to Devin's site as of August 2026.
Updated 2026-08-10
Not settled here. This entry does not record a confirmed free tier for Windsurf.
Listed pricing: Free tier; paid plans from $20/mo (the Devin lineup now served at windsurf.com) — verify before buying.
Overview
Windsurf is a VS Code fork built around Cascade, an agent that plans a change, edits across multiple files, runs terminal commands, reads the output and iterates. When this entry was first written in mid-2025 that loop was genuinely ahead of what Cursor's agent could do, and the codebase indexing behind it meant you rarely had to hand-feed context into a prompt. The editor is still competent at that job today.
What changed is who owns it and where it lives. Google DeepMind licensed the technology and hired CEO Varun Mohan along with the founding leadership in July 2025; Cognition, the company behind Devin, acquired what remained. On a check dated 10 August 2026, the windsurf.com product URL resolved to Cognition's Devin site, and the plans a prospective buyer actually sees there are Devin's: a free tier, Pro at $20 a month, Max at $200 a month, and Teams at $80 a month plus $40 per additional full developer seat. The Free / Pro $15 / Team $35 Windsurf lineup this entry previously published appears on none of those pages. Treat any Windsurf-branded price quoted elsewhere as unconfirmed until you see it on the checkout screen.
The honest take: if you already work in Windsurf, the Cascade workflow holds up and there is no urgent reason to migrate. But the 9.1 this entry used to carry was a score for a product with an independent roadmap and a clear technical lead, and neither is true now. Cursor and Claude Code have matched the multi-file agent loop, so a team standardizing on an AI editor in 2026 is choosing a Cognition sub-product whose standalone future nobody outside Cognition can forecast. The capability with no Cursor equivalent at any price is the enterprise self-hosted and air-gapped deployment with zero data retention, which is why regulated shops keep the Windsurf product line on their shortlist regardless of the ownership churn.
Is Windsurf free?
Not settled here. This entry does not record a confirmed free tier for Windsurf.
What the entry records: Yes, but it is credit-metered and is Devin's free tier, not the unlimited-basic-completions-forever tier this entry once described. That tier no longer exists. Confirm current allowances on the live pricing page before relying on it.
Listed pricing: Free tier; paid plans from $20/mo (the Devin lineup now served at windsurf.com) — verify before buying.
No figure is estimated here for what is not published. Check Windsurf's own site for the current terms.
Pricing verified . That is the date the plans were last re-checked against the vendor's own pages, not today's date. Confirm on the official site before you pay.
Windsurf pricing
| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | The lineup served at windsurf.com as of August 2026 is Cognition's Devin lineup, not a Windsurf-branded one. The free tier covers limited agent usage; the unlimited-completions-forever tier this entry originally described was retired. |
| Pro | $20/mo (Devin lineup) | Standard paid tier with a monthly agent allowance and access to cloud agents. Listed on devin.ai/pricing, which is where the Windsurf URL now resolves. |
| Max | $200/mo (Devin lineup) | High-volume individual tier for heavy agent usage. |
| Teams | $80/mo + $40 per additional full dev seat | Per-seat team plan with shared workspace and admin controls. |
| Enterprise | Custom | Self-hosted or air-gapped deployment, zero data retention, SSO/SAML and an SLA. Quoted directly by sales. |
The lineup served at windsurf.com as of August 2026 is Cognition's Devin lineup, not a Windsurf-branded one. The free tier covers limited agent usage; the unlimited-completions-forever tier this entry originally described was retired.
Standard paid tier with a monthly agent allowance and access to cloud agents. Listed on devin.ai/pricing, which is where the Windsurf URL now resolves.
High-volume individual tier for heavy agent usage.
Per-seat team plan with shared workspace and admin controls.
Self-hosted or air-gapped deployment, zero data retention, SSO/SAML and an SLA. Quoted directly by sales.
One plan carries no published number: Enterprise, recorded as “Custom”. Nothing is estimated in its place. The vendor's own pricing page is the only source for those figures.
Pricing verified . That is the date the plans were last re-checked against the vendor's own pages, not today's date. Confirm on the official site before you pay.
Is Windsurf worth it?
Worth it for Developers already productive in Windsurf's Cascade workflow who have no urgent reason to migrate, and teams evaluating Cognition's stack who want an editor-side agent sitting alongside Devin's cloud agents.
There is no free tier to test it on, so the plans above are the entry cost. The recorded trade-offs are listed below, and any one of them can settle the question on its own.
The 7.2/10 AI Score is an editorial read of published capability, price and shipping pace. Nobody here has hands-on hours with Windsurf. How we verify.
Worth it if
The strengths recorded against this entry.
- Cascade remains one of the better-designed agent loops: it plans, edits across files, runs commands, reads output and iterates without needing constant re-prompting
- Repo-wide indexing means the agent locates the relevant files itself instead of making you paste context
- Mixes cheap in-house SWE-series models for routine edits with frontier models for hard problems, so agent runs are not uniformly expensive
- Enterprise self-hosted and air-gapped deployment with zero data retention, which Cursor does not offer at any tier
- Full VS Code fork with terminal execution and file-write access, not a chat sidebar bolted onto an editor
Not worth it if
Any one of these blocks your use case.
- The founding team including CEO Varun Mohan left for Google DeepMind in July 2025 and Cognition bought what remained, so an independent product roadmap is not a safe assumption
- windsurf.com resolved to Cognition's Devin site when checked on 2026-08-10, meaning the plans a buyer actually encounters are Devin's and no Windsurf-branded price could be confirmed on any live page
- Cursor and Claude Code have caught up on multi-file agentic work, erasing the 2025 lead this entry's original 9.1 score was built on
- Pricing is credit-metered and hard to forecast for a team; the unlimited free tier that once made the product an easy recommendation is gone
What sets Windsurf apart
- Runs the agent inside a full VS Code fork with terminal execution and file-write access rather than a chat panel
- Ships its own SWE-series coding models instead of reselling a frontier API for every request
- Enterprise self-hosted and air-gapped deployment with zero data retention, unavailable from Cursor at any price
- Following the Cognition acquisition, it is the only editor-side agent sold under the same roof as Devin's cloud agents
Key features
Cascade Agent
Plans a task, edits across multiple files, runs terminal commands and reads the output before deciding its next step. This closed loop is the reason the editor was an early agentic leader, though rivals have since matched it.
In-House Coding Models
Routes routine completion and edits to Windsurf's own SWE-series models rather than calling a frontier API for every keystroke, with frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google available for harder reasoning. Specific model names in the picker change often; check the live list rather than trusting any published version number.
Repo-Wide Context Retrieval
Indexes the whole codebase so Cascade can pull the files a change actually touches without you @-mentioning them one at a time. Still one of the better retrieval implementations in the category.
Enterprise Self-Hosting
Self-hosted and air-gapped deployment with zero data retention, SSO/SAML and admin controls, available on the Windsurf product line. Cursor offers no on-premises equivalent in any tier.
How it compares
| Tool | Best for | Pricing | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windsurf | Developers already productive in Windsurf's Cascade workflow who have no urgent reason to migrate, and teams evaluating Cognition's stack who want an editor-side agent sitting alongside Devin's cloud agents. | Free tier; paid plans from $20/mo (the Devin lineup now served at windsurf.com) — verify before buying | 7.2/10 |
| Claude Code vs Claude Code → | Developers who want an agent that works inside an existing repo and toolchain rather than in a hosted editor, and who already pay for a Claude plan. | Included with Claude Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans | 9.3/10 |
| Cursor vs Cursor → | Professional developers who want an IDE-native agent that can also run in the cloud and be steered from a phone, and engineering teams that need admin control over which model handles which request. | Free Hobby + Individual $20/mo + Teams $40/user/mo + Enterprise custom | 9.2/10 |
| v0 by Vercel vs v0 by Vercel → | Frontend developers on React and Next.js who want production-ready UI generated from a text prompt or a screenshot instead of hand-built boilerplate. | Free tier + Plus $30/user/mo + Business $100/user/mo + Enterprise custom | 9/10 |
Learn to use Windsurf
Step-by-step, each one stamped with the date it was last checked against the docs.
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