Cursor vs Windsurf (Devin Desktop): Pricing & Which to Pick (2026)

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes. Last verified: August 21, 2026.

Key takeaways

• If you're searching for "Windsurf" and can't find it: Cognition rebranded the standalone Windsurf IDE to Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026. Your plan, pricing, extensions, and keybindings carried over automatically. It's the same product, not a shutdown.
• Cursor is Hobby (free) → Pro $20 / Pro+ $60 / Ultra $200 → Teams Standard $40 or Premium $120 per user → Enterprise (custom). It stays editor-first, with agents layered into the IDE.
• Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) flipped that framing: the default screen is now an Agent Command Center for managing local and cloud agents, with the code editor one click away. Pricing is Free → Pro $20/month → Max $200/month → Team $80/month base plus $40/month per full seat → Enterprise (custom).
• Devin Desktop's local agent, Cascade, was retired July 1, 2026, and replaced by Devin Local, a Rust rewrite Cognition says is about 30% more token-efficient and supports sub-agents.
• Devin Desktop also supports the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), so it can drive Codex, Claude Agent, and other third-party agents inside the same editor. Cursor is still primarily built around its own agent and model picker.

Table of contents

1. The Windsurf → Devin Desktop rebrand, explained
2. Platform overview
3. Pricing comparison
4. Agent capabilities compared
5. Which should you choose?

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The Windsurf → Devin Desktop rebrand, explained

On June 2, 2026, Cognition (the company behind Devin) shipped an over-the-air update that turned the standalone Windsurf IDE into Devin Desktop. No reinstall, no migration wizard: if you restarted Windsurf on or after that date, you were already running the new product, with your account, plan, extensions, and MCP connections intact.

Two things did not change name: the Windsurf VS Code/JetBrains plugin (still published as Codeium.codeium) is a separate product and kept its name. Only the standalone editor became Devin Desktop.

Two things did change substantially:

• The default screen. Windsurf's Agent Command Center, a Kanban-style panel for tracking running agents, used to be optional. In Devin Desktop it's the primary interface. You open the app and see agent sessions first, the code editor second.
• The local agent. Cascade, Windsurf's original agent, was deprecated and removed on July 1, 2026. Its replacement, Devin Local, is a full Rust rewrite that Cognition says is roughly 30% more token-efficient and adds support for sub-agents (one session spawning helper agents for parallel subtasks).

We're using "Windsurf" and "Devin Desktop" interchangeably through the rest of this piece since that's still how most people search for it, but the product you'd install today is Devin Desktop.

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Platform overview

Cursor

Cursor is a proprietary fork of VS Code, so your keybindings, themes, and extensions carry over. Its core pitch is deep codebase understanding: Agent mode reads your full project, plans multi-step changes, and edits across files, with support for switching between GPT, Claude, Gemini, and other frontier models per task.

Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)

Windsurf ships as a full VS Code-compatible IDE wrapped around an agent manager, built by Cognition (also the maker of Devin, an autonomous cloud coding agent). Instead of one agent bolted onto an editor, Devin Desktop treats the editor as one surface among several: Devin Desktop (local IDE), Devin Cloud (long-running autonomous agent on its own machine), Devin CLI (terminal), and Devin Review (automated code review on every diff), all sharing the same agent and context.

Cursor vs Devin Desktop in one line: Cursor is an AI-native editor with an agent inside it. Devin Desktop is an agent-management system with a full editor inside it.

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Pricing comparison

Plan	Cursor	Devin Desktop (Windsurf)
Free	Hobby: $0, limited Agent requests, access to Composer	Free: $0, light agent quota, unlimited Tab completions and inline edits
Entry paid	Pro: $20/month (extended Agent limits, frontier models, cloud agents; overage billed in arrears)	Pro: $20/month, increased quotas, full model access (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini), free SWE-1.7 model, cloud agent access
Power tier	Pro+: $60/month (~3x Pro usage); Ultra: $200/month (~20x Pro usage + priority)	Max: $200/month, significantly higher quotas than Pro
Team	Teams Standard: $40/user/month; Teams Premium: $120/user/month (~5x Standard usage); SSO, Bugbot, shared context	Team: $80/month base + $40/month per full dev seat, unlimited flex seats, centralized billing
Enterprise	Custom: pooled usage, invoice billing, audit logs, SCIM	Custom: VPC deployment, SAML/OIDC SSO, dedicated account team

Sources: cursor.com/pricing, windsurf.com/pricing (redirects to Devin's pricing page post-rebrand). Both Verified August 21, 2026.

The practical number: entry Pro is $20/month on both. Cursor's power path is Pro+ ($60) then Ultra ($200). Devin Desktop's power path is Max ($200) with quota ceilings instead of a separate Pro+ mid-tier. At team size, Cursor Standard is a flat $40/user; Devin Desktop adds an $80/month base on top of $40/full seat, so small teams pay more for Devin unless Premium Cursor seats or Max quotas change the math.

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Agent capabilities compared

• Multi-model support: both let you pick from GPT, Claude, and Gemini-family models per task. Devin Desktop adds a twist: through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), it can run third-party agents, including Codex and Claude Agent, inside its own interface, positioning itself as a "neutral cockpit" rather than a single-agent tool.
• Multi-file editing: Cursor's Agent mode plans and executes changes across files with diffs for review. Devin Local (Cascade's replacement) does the same, plus sub-agent spawning for parallel subtasks, which Cursor doesn't currently offer.
• Autonomy default: Cursor's agent generally waits for confirmation on larger actions unless you've configured auto-run. Devin Desktop's agents are closer to "act, don't ask" by default, which is faster when you trust the output and riskier when you don't review closely.
• Cloud/background agents: both offer cloud-based agent execution (Cursor's cloud agents, Devin Cloud), letting you kick off a task and walk away rather than watching it run locally.

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Which should you choose?

Choose Cursor if you want an AI-native editor that still feels like an editor first, prefer flat per-seat Teams pricing (Standard or Premium), or you're already deep in Cursor's ecosystem (rules, MCP servers, extensions) and don't need multi-agent orchestration.

Choose Devin Desktop if you're managing several concurrent coding agents and want a single Kanban view across all of them, you want the option to run non-Cognition agents (Codex, Claude Agent) through ACP inside the same tool, or the lower entry price with unlimited free-tier autocomplete matters more than a flat team rate.

For a broader shortlist including Claude Code, Codeium, and Amazon Q, see our best AI coding assistants for developers in 2026 guide.

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