---
title: Windsurf
slug: windsurf
url: "https://toolweight.com/options/windsurf"
homepage: "https://windsurf.com"
categories: coding-agents
last_verified: 2026-01-15
license: CC-BY-4.0
---

# Windsurf

> Agentic IDE built around Cascade, now owned by Cognition after a turbulent 2025.

Windsurf is an agentic IDE whose Cascade flow keeps the agent aware of what you are doing in the editor rather than only what you typed in a prompt. After an aborted OpenAI acquisition, a Google licensing deal and the acquisition of the remainder by Cognition in mid-2025, it now sits alongside Devin under one owner. It ships in-house models and prices in credits, which makes real monthly cost hard to forecast.

## Identity

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Name | Windsurf |
| Company | Cognition |
| One-liner | Agentic IDE built around Cascade, now owned by Cognition after a turbulent 2025. |
| Site | https://windsurf.com |
| Founded | 2021 |
| Open source | No |
| Licence | Proprietary |
| Brand | https://toolweight.com/vendors/Windsurf |
| Compared in | 1 |

## Where it is compared

### [Coding agents](https://toolweight.com/compare/coding-agents)
Ranked **#15 of 17** on default weights.
| Field | Value | Confidence | Verified | Source | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Surface | standalone editor, IDE extension | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://windsurf.com | - |
| Default model | Windsurf's in-house SWE model, with frontier models selectable | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Model breadth | multi-vendor | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Repo indexing | embeddings index | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | Codeium's retrieval engine predates the agent and is the strongest inherited asset. |
| Plan mode | ● | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Checkpoint & undo | ● | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Headless / CI | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Local models | ○ | Inferred | - | - | - |
| Where it stops | 3 | Inferred | - | - | Cascade edits and runs commands in the editor; PR involvement is review-side rather than authoring. |
| MCP | ● | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Subagents | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Hooks | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Skills / commands | ● | Community-reported | - | - | Rules and workflow files. |
| Background agents | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | - |
| Opens PRs | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | Review-side integration is stronger than authoring. |
| Permissions | granular allowlist | Inferred | - | - | Command allowlists inside the editor; no OS sandbox we could verify. |
| BYOK | ◐ | Community-reported | - | - | Available on some plans and models, not as a general escape hatch. |
| Licence | proprietary | Inferred | 2026-01-15 | - | - |
| Pricing model | opaque credits | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://windsurf.com/pricing | Prompt credits; the credit-to-token conversion is vendor-defined. |
| Entry price | $15 /seat/mo | Vendor-claimed | 2026-01-15 | https://windsurf.com/pricing | - |
| Token markup | ● | Inferred | - | - | Credits abstract over tokens; you cannot pay a provider directly at list. |
| GitHub stars | - | Unknown | - | - | Closed source. |
| Terminal-Bench | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Bench model | - | Unknown | - | - | - |
| Positioning | The agentic IDE where you and the agent stay in flow together. | Vendor-claimed | - | https://windsurf.com | - |
| First release | 2024-11-13 | Community-reported | - | - | Windsurf Editor launch; Codeium's plugins are older. |

**Verdict.** Cascade's editor awareness is genuinely good and the retrieval engine is mature, but the 2025 ownership churn, an aborted OpenAI deal, a Google licensing carve-out, then acquisition by Cognition, is a real continuity risk. Credit pricing makes monthly cost hard to forecast.

## Alternatives

- [Aider](https://toolweight.com/options/aider), Minimal terminal pair-programmer with a tree-sitter repo map and automatic git commits.
- [Amp](https://toolweight.com/options/amp), Sourcegraph's opinionated agent with no model picker and an ad-supported free tier.
- [Claude Code](https://toolweight.com/options/claude-code), Anthropic's terminal-first agent, with IDE, web and GitHub Action surfaces.
- [Cline](https://toolweight.com/options/cline), Open-source VS Code and JetBrains agent built around an explicit plan/act split.
- [Codex CLI](https://toolweight.com/options/codex-cli), OpenAI's open-source Rust agent, with the strongest local sandboxing on this page.
- [Cursor](https://toolweight.com/options/cursor), VS Code fork with a real codebase index, background cloud agents and a CLI.
- [Devin](https://toolweight.com/options/devin), Fully delegated cloud engineer: file a task in Slack or the web app, get a PR back.
- [DIY harness](https://toolweight.com/options/diy-harness), Your own loop over a model API with an agent SDK, the build-it-yourself reference point.
- [Gemini CLI](https://toolweight.com/options/gemini-cli), Apache-2.0 terminal agent from Google with an unusually generous free tier.
- [GitHub Copilot (Agent HQ)](https://toolweight.com/options/github-copilot), Copilot's coding agent plus a control plane for running third-party agents on your repos.
- [Goose](https://toolweight.com/options/goose), Block's Apache-2.0 agent, MCP-native from the start, as both a CLI and a desktop app.
- [Grok Build](https://toolweight.com/options/grok-build), xAI's coding harness, launched July 2026, on this page but not yet verified.

## Licence and attribution

Data from toolweight (https://toolweight.com), licensed CC-BY-4.0.

- Licence: [CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- Canonical HTML: https://toolweight.com/options/windsurf
- Machine-readable: https://toolweight.com/options/windsurf.md · https://toolweight.com/api/v1 · https://toolweight.com/mcp
- toolweight takes no affiliate revenue and sells no placements. Corrections: https://toolweight.com/suggest