Windsurf

Windsurf is a VS Code-based AI code editor developed by Codeium, acquired by Cognition AI (makers of Devin) in December 2025 for approximately $250 million. Its flagship feature is Cascade — an agentic AI flow that autonomously plans, writes, and debugs code across multiple files with full awareness of the entire codebase. Context is maintained through Codemaps, a semantic index that keeps the agent oriented even in very large projects. Windsurf's proprietary SWE-1.5 model, available on paid plans, is specifically optimized for software engineering tasks. The March 2026 pricing overhaul moved from a credit-based to a quota-based system with daily quota refreshes on Pro. The editor is fully VS Code-compatible, supporting the same extensions and keyboard shortcuts, making it a low-friction switch from VS Code or Cursor. Key capabilities include Cascade agent mode for multi-step autonomous coding, real-time tab autocomplete, inline edits, a chat interface with codebase context, and support for all major programming languages. Teams plans add SSO, admin controls, and organization-level privacy settings. Pricing: Free tier includes basic completions with limited daily AI interactions. Pro costs $20 per month (raised from $15 in March 2026) with unlimited Cascade sessions, premium models including Claude Sonnet and GPT-4o, and daily quota refreshes. Max costs $200 per month with expanded quotas and priority access. Teams is $40 per user per month. Annual Pro billing reduces the effective cost to approximately $12 per month. Limitations: The March 2026 pricing overhaul raised costs and disrupted existing users. The acquisition by Cognition AI creates uncertainty about long-term product direction. Heavy users can hit daily quota limits on Pro. The extension marketplace is smaller than VS Code or Cursor. Best suited for developers wanting a capable agentic code editor with a proprietary coding-optimized model at a competitive price, particularly as a Cursor alternative with strong semantic codebase awareness.