Best Windsurf Alternatives in 2026

The best Windsurf alternatives right now are Cursor for a like-for-like IDE swap, Google Antigravity if you want a genuinely free agentic IDE, and GitHub Copilot if your team lives in GitHub. Windsurf itself still exists, but since 2 June 2026 it ships as Devin Desktop after Cognition acquired it in July 2025. Nothing was removed. The name, the quota tiers and the pricing structure all changed.

Here is the short version for anyone deciding this week. Stay put if your editor works and your team is small. Switch if the rebrand shook you, if you rely on the deprecated JetBrains plugin, or if you want an open-source or per-seat agent you control.

Windsurf alternatives at a glance

All pricing below was read from each vendor’s own page on 14 October 2026. “Free plan” means a permanent, no-expiry tier.

Alternative	Best for	Free plan	Starting price	Main advantage	Main limitation
Cursor	A full standalone AI IDE, one-for-one with Windsurf	Yes	$8/month (Plus)	Cloud agents, code review and third-party models from $30/month	Plus tier is Grok-only; free tier usage is explicitly limited
GitHub Copilot	Teams already in GitHub; every IDE	Yes	$0 (Free) / $10 (Pro)	Works in VS Code, JetBrains, Eclipse, Xcode and Visual Studio	Free capped at 2,000 completions/month, auto model selection only
Claude Code	Power users wanting terminal autonomy	No	$20/month (Claude Pro)	Strongest long-horizon agent behaviour available	No free tier; rolling five-hour and weekly limits
Google Antigravity	Getting a capable agentic IDE for free	Yes	$0/month	Unlimited Tab completions and Command requests	Weekly quota; no BYOK; third-party models need paid Google AI
Kiro	AWS teams wanting predictable credit costs	Yes	$0/month (50 credits)	Published per-model credit multipliers	Premium models burn credits fast; AWS-centric
Zed	Fast editor, refuse to pay for AI	Yes	$0 (editor) / $10 (Pro)	Bring your own keys, hosts external ACP agents	AI at provider list price +10%; no SSO/SAML/SCIM yet
Augment Code	Large monorepos where context is the bottleneck	No	$20/month flat	Flat price, up to 50 seats, no per-seat charge	No free plan; 40% fee on LLM usage; compute billed separately
Amp	Remote agents that keep working unattended	Yes	$0 (Hobby) / $20 (Individual)	Fresh remote machine per agent thread	Less control over your local environment; orb minutes on paid tiers
Cline	Open-source, approval-first agent in VS Code	Yes	Free with BYOK / $9.99 (ClinePass)	Runs inside Windsurf and Cursor too	Tokens still cost money; approval flow slows work down
Qwen Code	Open-source terminal agent, open-weight models	Yes	$0	Fully open source with matching open models	No vendor support or pooled quota
OpenCode	One open-source agent across terminal, desktop, IDE	Yes	$0	Terminal, desktop and IDE extension on one core	Rapid versioning churn; no support or admin console
Replit Agent	Prototyping and shipping small apps fast	Limited	$20/month (Core)	Hosting, database and deploy already included	Different workflow; credits force a jump to $100 Pro

Why look for a Windsurf alternative?

Three concrete things changed this year, and they are the reason this question comes up at all.

The product you knew no longer exists under its name. Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf on 14 July 2025, taking in the IDE, the trademark and the brand alongside a business it described as reaching $82M ARR with 350+ enterprise customers. Cognition’s own announcement of the Windsurf acquisition set out the deal. Fifteen months later, on 2 June 2026, the product was renamed Devin Desktop.

“We’re building on the IDE foundation of Windsurf to introduce the command center for managing all your agents in one place.”

That line from the Devin Desktop launch post is worth reading twice. It is a rebrand, but it is also a change of product thesis - from “an AI IDE” to “a command centre for agents you dispatch”.

Cascade is being retired. The local agent inside Windsurf was Cascade. Its replacement is Devin Local, which Cognition says it rewrote from scratch in Rust with subagent support and up to 30% better token efficiency. Legacy Cascade is only available through July 2026. If your prompts, workflows or custom tooling assume Cascade behaviour, that assumption has an expiry date.

The price of team use went up. On the current pricing page, a full developer seat on Devin Desktop Teams costs $40 per month, on top of an $80 per month team plan. An archived capture of Windsurf’s own pricing page before the rebrand showed Pro at $15 per month and Teams at $30 per user per month. Pro is now $20 per month, and the team structure has changed shape entirely.

Two smaller irritations worth naming. The Windsurf JetBrains plugin is in maintenance mode with Cascade inside it deprecated, which is a real problem if you live in IntelliJ IDEA or PyCharm. And the paid tiers describe their allowances as “increased quotas” and “significantly higher quotas” without publishing a number, which makes forecasting hard in a way it was not when Windsurf published prompt-credit counts.

None of that makes Devin Desktop a bad product. It makes it a product you should look at alternatives to.

How I chose these alternatives

Prices, plan names and features come from vendor pricing pages and official documentation checked on 14 October 2026.

Each candidate had to clear three bars. It had to be an active product with a live pricing page. It had to overlap with a real Windsurf workflow - coding inside an editor or terminal with an agent that can edit files, run commands and review diffs. And it had to be honestly reachable by one person, meaning a plan someone could actually sign up for today.

I scored on twelve criteria: output quality, ease of use, price, free-tier value, integrations, collaboration, customisation, reliability, privacy and security, platform support, migration difficulty and scalability. Migration difficulty carried real weight, because a tool that is better but costs you a week of reconfiguration is not a better recommendation.

Ratings in the comparison table are my editorial judgement on a five-point scale.

One caveat worth flagging. Cursor’s own pricing page and its help documentation are currently out of sync: the live pricing page lists Free, Plus, Premium, Super and Ultra, while the help centre still documents an older Pro and Pro+ ladder. I have used the live pricing page throughout, since that is what a buyer actually sees at checkout.

1. Cursor - Best overall

Cursor is the closest single replacement for Windsurf, because it is the same product category with the same muscle memory.

It is a standalone desktop editor built for agents rather than an AI layer bolted onto someone else’s IDE, which means someone who spent two years inside Windsurf will feel at home on day one. Agent, Chat and Tab completions all work the same way. The main additions on top of what Windsurf offered are cloud agents and automations, code hosting, and AI code review via Bugbot.

Current pricing, read from Cursor’s pricing page on 14 October 2026:

Plan	Monthly price	What you get
Free	$0	Limited agent requests and chat requests
Plus	$8	Introductory tier, Grok models only
Premium	$30	4x Plus usage, cloud agents, code review, third-party models at API list price
Super	$100	15x Plus usage, priority model access at peak times
Ultra	$200	50x Plus usage, earliest access to everything
Teams	$30+ per user	Centralised billing, SAML/OIDC SSO, SCIM, audit logs
Enterprise	Custom	Pooled usage, invoicing, advanced admin controls

Three things to know before you commit. First, the $8 Plus plan is explicitly limited to Grok models - if you want Claude, GPT or Gemini you are looking at $30. Second, third-party models are billed separately at API list price and are not included in the subscription. Third, and this matters for a stability read, Cursor was acquired by SpaceX on 14 August 2026. The product is clearly still shipping - the changelog shows an Origin App Marketplace entry dated 13 October 2026 - but the roadmap now belongs to a company whose main business is not developer tooling.

Verdict: switch if you want the same experience under a different name and want cloud agents included at a sane price. Cursor is my best overall pick because nothing about your day-to-day has to change.

2. GitHub Copilot - Best for teams

GitHub Copilot is the pick when your constraint is organisational rather than technical.

Its advantage is that it does not care which editor your team standardised on. Copilot works in Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse and Xcode, plus the Copilot app, Copilot CLI, GitHub.com and GitHub Mobile. Every plan includes the CLI and the app.

Pricing, from GitHub’s official plans documentation as read on 14 October 2026:

Plan	Price	AI Credits per month
Copilot Free	$0	Limited allowance; 2,000 completions/month
Copilot Student	$0	Same shape, excludes third-party agents
Copilot Pro	$10	1,000 base + 500 flex = 1,500
Copilot Pro+	$39	3,900 base + 3,100 flex = 7,000
Copilot Max	$100	10,000 base + 10,000 flex = 20,000
Copilot Business	$19 per granted seat	1,900 per user
Copilot Enterprise	$39 per granted seat	3,900 per user

The honest limitation is that Copilot Free is thin. It is capped at 2,000 completions a month and restricts you to automatic model selection, so you cannot pick Claude over Gemini. It is a genuine free tier but it is not a working replacement for a paid Windsurf plan.

Where Copilot wins is arithmetic. A single full developer seat on Devin Desktop Teams costs $40 per month plus the $80 team plan. Copilot Enterprise is $39 per seat with no team-level fee, and Copilot Business is $19. For a fifty-person engineering organisation that is not a rounding error.

Verdict: pick Copilot when procurement prefers one vendor-neutral layer over a dedicated IDE, or when your team is split across JetBrains and VS Code. Do not pick it hoping for a dedicated AI-native editor experience.

3. Claude Code - Best for power users

Claude Code has the highest ceiling on this list and the least hand-holding.

It is a terminal agent rather than an IDE. It reads and writes files, runs commands, and works through a plan before it executes. For engineers who have already made peace with a command line, the reasoning quality and autonomy on long tasks are the best on this list by a clear margin.

From Claude’s pricing page as read on 14 October 2026: Free at $0 does not include Claude Code. Claude Pro is $20 per month billed monthly, or $17 per month billed annually at $200 up front, and it includes Claude Code. Max starts at $100 per month. Team standard seats are $25 monthly or $20 annually; premium seats are $125 monthly or $100 annually. You can also run it on raw API billing if you would rather meter it yourself.

Being precise about the free tier matters here, because it is the single most common misconception about this product. Claude Code is not available on the free plan. If you want to try it you need Pro, Max, a Team seat, or API credits. Our separate look at the wider Claude subscription plans covers what Max actually adds and is worth reading before you decide which tier to jump to.

The real cost is unpredictability. Limits reset on a rolling five-hour window with weekly caps layered on top, and paid plans can toggle usage credits to keep going at standard API rates. If you run several agents in parallel, you will find that bill.

Verdict: the right choice if you want the strongest agent and are willing to work in a terminal and manage your own spend. Poor fit if you rely on inline autocomplete or a visual diff review.

4. Google Antigravity - Best free

Google Antigravity is the best free Windsurf alternative because its free tier is not a countdown timer.

On the free Individual plan at $0 per month, Antigravity’s pricing page as read on 14 October 2026, you get access to a range of agent models including Gemini 3.8 Flash, unlimited Tab completions, unlimited Command requests, and access to the CLI and all product features. There is no trial clock and no card required.

The quota system is the honest caveat. Free-tier quotas refresh weekly, Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers get quotas refreshing every five hours, and Google states plainly that rate limits are set by available capacity. So the free plan is real but not predictable. If you are someone who likes knowing what you have, that will grate.

There is also no bring-your-own-key. You cannot point Antigravity at your own Anthropic or OpenAI key, and third-party models are reserved for Ultra subscribers. Business and enterprise access comes through Google Cloud under Gemini Enterprise, with Standard and Plus plans starting at $30 per seat per month, or a pay-as-you-go option with a $0 seat fee.

Verdict: download it. If the free tier is not enough for your workload after two weeks, you have lost nothing but time.

5. Kiro - Best for AWS teams

Kiro is the only agentic IDE here where you can price a task before you run it.

Every Kiro prompt consumes credits, and the credits-per-task depend on a published multiplier relative to an “Auto” baseline of 1.0x. Claude Opus 5.5 costs 2.0x. Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs 1.3x. Claude Haiku 4.5 costs 0.4x. DeepSeek 3.2, MiniMax M2.5 and Qwen3 Coder Next all cost 0.25x or less. Kiro’s pricing page, dated 30 September 2026 and read on 14 October 2026, lists:

Plan	Monthly price	Credits
Kiro Free	$0	50
Kiro Pro	$20	1,000
Kiro Pro+	$40	2,000
Kiro Pro Max	$100	5,000
Kiro Power	$200	10,000
Enterprise	Custom	Contact sales

All are per-user monthly prices, billed on the first of each calendar month. Add-on credits cost $0.04 each and roll over for twelve months. The free tier gets you Auto plus open-weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5 - a genuinely useful tier, not a token gesture.

Kiro subscriptions work across the Kiro IDE, CLI, web, Kiro Crew and any ACP-compatible editor, which is why it can also run inside Devin Desktop itself. AWS GovCloud pricing runs roughly 20% above commercial and drops the free tier.

Verdict: strongest fit for an AWS-committed team that wants agentic coding with auditable unit economics. The trade is that premium models consume credits quickly enough that plan choice matters more than it does elsewhere.

6. Zed - Best minimal editor

Zed is the pick for anyone who wants a fast editor and refuses to buy an AI platform to get it.

The free plan is the entire editor - syntax highlighting, LSP support, debugger, Git, multiplayer collaboration - with no hosted models and no edit predictions. You configure your own API keys and it works. That is a real free tier for a real product, which almost nothing else on this list offers.

Pro is $10 per month and includes $5 of monthly token credit, all hosted models, and unlimited edit predictions. Hosted usage beyond the credit is billed at provider list price plus 10%, so there is no pooled quota to reason about - just a meter. Zed also hosts external ACP agents, which means Claude, Codex, OpenCode and Copilot can all run as agents inside it without any of them needing a Zed subscription.

Two things to know. There is a 14-day Pro trial with $5 of GPT-6 Luna usage and no credit card required, and trials auto-convert to the free plan rather than billing you. And on Business, Zed is explicit that SSO, SAML and SCIM are planned but not currently available - a genuine gap if you are buying centrally.

Verdict: excellent if you already know which model you want. Skip it if you need enterprise identity management today.

7. Augment Code - Best for large codebases

Augment Code is the specialist option for engineers whose problem is context, not intelligence.

Its Context Engine indexes your repository and feeds the relevant slice to the agent, and that same index can be exposed to other agents over MCP - there are documented quickstarts for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Kiro, GitHub Copilot and Zed. If your agent keeps hallucinating about code it should know, this is the tool built to fix that.

Pricing is unusual and, for a team, attractive: a flat monthly fee with no per-seat charge, pooled across up to 50 seats.

Plan	Monthly price	Included usage
Standard	$20	$20 across tokens, Context Engine and compute
Business	$100	$100 across the same
Enterprise	Custom	Bespoke limits, SSO/OIDC/SCIM, CMEK and ISO 42001

The cost mechanics are published, which I appreciate. LLM tokens are billed at the provider’s public API list price, Augment adds a flat 40% service fee on LLM usage - not on compute - and Cosmos sandbox compute runs at $0.19 per hour in five-minute increments. Augment’s own worked example shows a $100 Business month splitting into roughly $70 of tokens, $28 of service fee and $2 of compute. All paid plans exclude AI training on your data.

There is no free plan. Twenty dollars a month is the entry point, and that is the honest headline drawback for individuals.

Verdict: pick Augment if your codebase defeats other agents. Do not pick it for autocomplete - that is not what you are buying.

8. Amp - Best for cloud agents

Amp is the answer to a specific frustration: agents that stop making progress the moment you look away.

Its model is “orbs” - a fresh remote machine per thread, with your code, plugins and tools already set up. No worktrees to juggle, no port conflicts, and the agent keeps running after you close your laptop. You pick it up from a web page, a terminal or your phone. It also supports event-driven wakes, so an orb can react to a new Linear issue or a failing CI run on main.

Pricing, as read on 14 October 2026:

Plan	Price	What you get
Hobby	Free	All product features; pay-as-you-go orbs or your own runners; use your ChatGPT or Claude subscription; BYOK
Individual	$20/month	45,000 minutes of orb time, unlimited repositories, custom portal domains
Teams	No extra charge	Mixed tiers, shared billing and pooled credits, SAML/OIDC SSO
Enterprise	Custom	Pooled credits only, SCIM, audit logs, spend limits, IP allowlisting

The Hobby tier is the interesting part. You can bring your existing ChatGPT or Claude subscription and use those tokens inside Amp rather than paying twice for inference. Amp charges no token fees or limits on any tier.

Verdict: the most distinctive product here and the least like a desktop IDE. Worth a trial if your bottleneck is supervision rather than capability.

9. Cline - Best open-source VS Code extension

Cline is the lowest-risk way to leave Windsurf, because you can install it inside Windsurf first and test the switch without uninstalling anything.

It is an open-source agent that lives in your editor and requires explicit approval for every action it takes - reads, writes, terminal commands, all of it. That approval loop is slower than an autonomous agent, but it is a real safety property in regulated environments, and it is the reason many enterprise teams like it.

It runs as a VS Code extension, a JetBrains plugin, a CLI, a desktop app and a Kanban board that fans agents out across per-card git worktrees. Per Cline’s own documentation, it also works inside Cursor, Windsurf, Antigravity and Zed, plus Neovim via ACP mode.

The pricing model is straightforward: free for individual developers, paying only for model inference either through your own keys or Cline’s usage-billed provider path. There is a ClinePass subscription at $9.99 per month offering 2-5x usage on popular open coding models versus standard API rates. Enterprise is custom-priced and adds SSO, RBAC, centralised billing, audit logs and JetBrains support.

Be clear-eyed about the cost. The extension is free; the tokens are not. Anyone who says Cline is “free” has not yet run an agentic task on a frontier model.

Verdict: the best migration experiment available, because you can run Cline and your current setup side by side for a week.

10. Qwen Code - Best open-source terminal agent

Qwen Code is the cheapest credible agent if you are willing to supply your own model access and accept no vendor relationship.

It is an open-source terminal agent, published alongside open-source Qwen models, so both halves of the stack are inspectable. It speaks OpenAI-, Anthropic- and Gemini-compatible APIs, or you can sign in with Qwen OAuth and skip the key management. Built-in tools cover skills and subagents, and there is a headless mode for CI and an SDK for building on top of it.

It also integrates with VS Code, Zed and JetBrains IDEs, so it is not strictly terminal-only if you want editor presence.

There is no paid tier from the vendor. That is the trade in a single sentence: no support contract, no pooled quota, no enterprise admin console, and no one to call when something breaks. The documentation is also thinner and younger than Claude Code’s.

Verdict: the sovereignty play. Pick it when “no vendor can see or change this” is a requirement rather than a preference.

11. OpenCode - Best multi-surface open-source agent

OpenCode is the broadest open-source option because the same agent runs in a terminal, a desktop app and an IDE extension.

It has the workflow affordances that matter for long autonomous runs: a Plan mode that prevents edits while you agree on approach, and undo and redo that rewind an agent’s changes without losing the conversation thread. Shared sessions create a link you can send a teammate. Installation covers macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker and the usual package managers.

It is worth noting that OpenCode is one of the agents Devin Desktop supports natively over ACP, alongside Codex and Claude Agent. That means you can run OpenCode inside the editor you already have before deciding whether to leave it.

The limitations are the usual open-source ones. Rapid major-version churn means occasional breakage. There is no vendor support, no SSO and no admin console. And you supply the model, so you own the cost, the compliance story and the availability risk. There is an optional OpenCode Zen gateway with a curated model list if you would rather not wire providers yourself.

Verdict: the best open-source pick if you want one agent everywhere rather than one agent in one place.

12. Replit Agent - Best for rapid prototyping

Replit Agent is the right tool when the goal is a working deployed application, not a better local coding loop.

Everything a project needs - host, database, deployment, secrets - is already there, so the gap between “I have an idea” and “here is a URL” is measured in minutes. That is a genuinely different proposition from every other tool on this list, and for a prototype it is unbeatable.

Pricing, read on 14 October 2026: Core at $20 per month, or $18 billed annually, with $20 toward more capable models; Pro at $100 per month, or $90 annually, with 10 parallel agents, up to 15 collaborators, $100 in credits and database rollback up to 28 days; Enterprise custom with SSO/SAML, advanced privacy controls and single-tenant environments. There is a free mode, but Replit’s own framing is that AI integrations get up to 30 hours of chat on Core, so a free account is not a free agentic IDE in the way Antigravity or Zed are.

The honest caveat about workflow: this is a hosted platform, not a desktop editor. You are running code on someone else’s infrastructure, and for some teams that is a decision rather than a default.

Verdict: use it for prototypes and demos. For an existing, large, local codebase, it is the wrong shape of tool.

Which Windsurf alternative should you choose?

Match the situation to the product, not the other way round.

1. You want the closest one-for-one replacement - Cursor. Same category, same habits, cloud agents included from $30/month.
2. Your team is spread across JetBrains, VS Code and Xcode - GitHub Copilot at $19 per seat. It does not care which editor.
3. You want zero cost and do not mind unpredictable quotas - Google Antigravity.
4. You want zero cost and want to keep your own editor - Cline with your own API keys, or Zed if you do not need an agent at all.
5. You are a terminal person who wants the strongest agent - Claude Code on the Pro plan, with usage credits enabled so long runs do not stall.
6. You are on AWS and want to forecast agent spend - Kiro, where published credit multipliers make the bill calculable in advance.
7. Your agent keeps missing how your codebase works - Augment Code, despite the 40% markup on token usage.
8. Your real problem is supervising too many agents - Amp, where agents run on remote machines that keep going without you.
9. Compliance requires open source or approval gates - Cline for human-in-the-loop, Qwen Code or OpenCode for full sovereignty.
10. You need something deployed today - Replit Agent, Core at $20/month.

When you should keep Windsurf

Stay on Devin Desktop if any of these are true.

• Your extensions and settings already work. Cognition states plainly that your plan, pricing, extensions, workflows and in-progress work all carry over automatically, and that only the name and branding change. There is no migration project here.
• You are happy with the cost. Pro is $20 per month. Max is $200. Teams is $80 per month plus $40 per full developer seat. If those numbers work for you, nothing on this list is dramatically cheaper at the same feature level.
• You want the Cognition stack in one place. Devin Desktop, Devin Cloud, Devin CLI and Devin Review are the same vendor and the same agent. If you already use Devin Cloud, the command centre view is genuinely a reason to stay rather than leave.
• You are on the Agent Client Protocol already. Devin Desktop runs Codex, Claude Agent and OpenCode natively, plus your own in-house agents. That support is not available in most alternatives.
• Your team is small. The Teams pricing change hurts most above roughly ten developers. Below that, $40 per seat is not going to move a decision.

If none of that convinces you and you are still on Windsurf, read the Devin Desktop FAQ once before you leave it. It documents the Cascade end date, the JetBrains plugin status, the MDM application rename and the rules migration paths - and it is the single most useful page for deciding whether anything you rely on is going away.

When switching makes sense

Specific problems, mapped to the strongest fix.

Your MDM or endpoint policy blocks the app. Devin Desktop ships as Devin.app, Devin.exe and devin on Linux. A policy that allowlists “Windsurf” will flag or block it. Fix it in policy, or move to Zed or Cline where the binary name is not in flux.

You rely on the JetBrains plugin. It is in maintenance mode and Cascade inside it is being deprecated. Fix: GitHub Copilot, which supports JetBrains properly and is actively developed, or Kiro, which also runs in ACP-compatible editors.

Teams pricing is hurting. Copilot Business at $19 per seat, or Augment Code’s flat $100 Business plan with no per-seat charge for up to 50 people. Both are cheaper per head at scale.

You cannot forecast your agent bill. The Devin Desktop paid tiers do not publish quota numbers. Kiro publishes per-model multipliers, Augment publishes token rates plus a fixed service fee and compute rate, and Copilot publishes credit allowances per plan.

You want the agent to run without you. Amp’s orbs exist for this. Devin Cloud does something similar, but it is a separate SKU rather than the default editor experience.

You want to stop depending on a vendor’s roadmap. OpenCode, Qwen Code and Cline are open source and take your own keys. Nothing about them can be repriced or renamed under you.

How to migrate without chaos

Do not uninstall Windsurf on day one. There is a much better sequence, and the good news is that two of the strongest alternatives can run inside the editor you already have.

Week one: run the alternative side by side. Install Cline inside Windsurf - it is supported there - and install OpenCode, which Devin Desktop also supports over ACP. Pick one real task, roughly a day’s work, and run it in both. You are comparing your own workflow, not a benchmark.

Week two: port your rules before your code. Devin Desktop reads .windsurfrules at the workspace root, files under .windsurf/rules/, AGENTS.md and agents.md, and can import .cursor/rules. Every major alternative supports AGENTS.md. That is your migration path - copy your rules into AGENTS.md at the repo root and they will work almost everywhere. Verify this against your own repos before you rely on it.

Week two: move your MCP configuration. Windsurf keeps MCP config at ~/.codeium/mcp_config.json. Copy it into each new tool’s config directory. This is the step most people skip and the step that causes the most frustration three weeks later.

Week three: export what is worth exporting. Conversations and agent history rarely migrate. Your rules, your MCP servers, your keybindings and your ignore files do. Copy those, and accept that chat history is gone.

Week three: measure before you cancel. Run a full sprint on the new tool. Compare time-to-merged-PR and the number of agent interventions you had to make, not the number of prompts you sent. That is the number that matters.

Finally, read the release notes for both. Every product on this list is shipping weekly. Kiro’s model catalogue changed on 13 October 2026. Cursor’s changelog had an entry on 13 October 2026. Check the changelog of whatever you pick before you finalise your decision.

Final recommendation

Best overall: Cursor. It is the only option that requires no change in how you work, and at $30 per month for Premium you get cloud agents, code review and third-party model access in the package. If you were productive in Windsurf, you will be productive in Cursor by Tuesday.

Best free: Google Antigravity. Unlimited Tab completions and unlimited Command requests on a permanent $0 plan, from a vendor that can afford to keep it free. Download it before you spend anything.

Best for power users: Claude Code. The highest ceiling, on Claude Pro at $20 per month. Buy it if you will actually live in the terminal; ignore it if you need a GUI.

Keep Windsurf - now Devin Desktop - if your extensions and settings already work, your team is small, you want Cognition’s cloud agents in the same surface, or you simply like the tool. A rename is not a reason to churn, and the pricing for individuals has not moved much.

Switch if you are an IntelliJ user, your team is large enough for the new seat pricing to bite, you cannot forecast your agent bill, or you have simply decided you would rather own the code. Any of those is a good enough reason. A logo change is not.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Windsurf alternative overall? Cursor. Of the Windsurf alternatives, it is the closest structural match to what Windsurf was - a standalone AI-native editor with an agent, cloud agents and code review - and it is the easiest switch for someone whose habits were built inside Windsurf.

Is there a free alternative to Windsurf? Yes, Google Antigravity. Its free Individual plan gives unlimited Tab completions and unlimited Command requests plus a weekly agent quota, which makes it the best free option. The catch is that third-party models and AI-credit overages are reserved for paid Google AI tiers, and the quota refreshes weekly rather than continuously.

Did Windsurf shut down? No. Cognition acquired Windsurf and signed a definitive agreement on 14 July 2025, then renamed the product Devin Desktop on 2 June 2026. The app, your extensions, your settings and your plan all carried over as a standard over-the-air update. Only the branding changed - and Cascade is being phased out in favour of Devin Local.

Is Windsurf still worth keeping? Yes, if you are happy with it. Existing plans, pricing and workflows are unchanged and nothing was removed. Switch mainly if the rebrand unsettled you, if you rely on the deprecated JetBrains plugin, if your team is large enough for the new per-seat Teams pricing to matter, or if you want an open-source or per-seat option you control.

What replaced Cascade in Windsurf? Devin Local - a local agent Cognition rewrote from scratch in Rust with subagent support and up to 30% better token efficiency. Legacy Cascade is available only through July 2026, so any tooling or prompt patterns built around Cascade assumptions need revisiting now rather than later.

Which Windsurf alternative is cheapest for an individual? Zed, at $10 per month including $5 of token credit, or Cursor’s Plus tier at $8 per month - though Plus is explicitly restricted to Grok models. If you want to pay nothing, Google Antigravity and Cline are both permanently free in their own way, and Zed’s editor itself is free indefinitely.

Which Windsurf alternative is best for large codebases? Augment Code. Its Context Engine indexes the repository and feeds the relevant context to agents, its flat pricing has no per-seat charge for up to 50 seats, and it publishes exact per-model token rates plus a disclosed 40% service fee so you can forecast spend rather than discover it.

Can I use Claude Code or OpenCode inside Devin Desktop? Yes. Devin Desktop supports the Agent Client Protocol, and Codex, Claude Agent and OpenCode are supported at launch. That same ACP support is why Kiro and Augment’s CLI can also run inside it, which makes trying alternatives cheap - you can evaluate several without leaving the editor you already have.

What is the cheapest way to replace Windsurf for a whole team? GitHub Copilot. Copilot Business is $19 per granted seat per month and Copilot Enterprise is $39, both below a single Devin Desktop full developer seat at $40 per month once the $80 per month team plan is counted - and Copilot works in every major IDE your team might be using.

Is Cursor better than Windsurf? It depends what you are optimising for. Cursor is the better fit if you want a dedicated AI IDE with cloud agents and code review. Devin Desktop is the better fit if you want one surface that also manages Cognition’s cloud agents and Devin Review under a single vendor and a single bill.