Guide
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes. Last verified: August 2026.
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:
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.
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.
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.
| 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 | Individual: $20/month (Pro/Pro+/Ultra tiers, extended agent limits and frontier model access, on-demand 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 | Not a separate published tier; Ultra sits inside Individual with higher limits | Max: $200/month, significantly higher quotas than Pro |
| Team | Teams: $40/user/month, centralized billing, SAML/OIDC SSO, agentic code review (Bugbot) | 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 Aug 1, 2026.
The practical number: entry-level paid pricing is identical at $20/month for both. The gap shows up at the team tier: Cursor Teams is a flat $40/user/month, while Devin Desktop's Team plan adds an $80/month base fee on top of $40/month per full seat, which makes it costlier for very small teams (2-3 people) and roughly comparable at larger seat counts once the base fee amortizes.
Choose Cursor if you want an AI-native editor that still feels like an editor first, prefer a flat per-seat team price, 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.
Is Windsurf shutting down? No. Windsurf was rebranded to Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026, through an automatic update. Existing accounts, plans, and extensions carried over unchanged; it's a rename plus an interface pivot toward agent management, not a shutdown.
What happened to Cascade? Cascade, Windsurf's original local agent, reached end-of-life on July 1, 2026. Devin Local, a Rust rewrite that Cognition says is about 30% more token-efficient and supports sub-agents, replaced it as the default.
Is the Windsurf extension for VS Code affected?
No. The separate Windsurf/Codeium plugin for VS Code and JetBrains (published as Codeium.codeium) kept its name and was not part of this rebrand. Only the standalone IDE became Devin Desktop.
Which is cheaper for a 5-person team? Cursor Teams is a flat $40/user/month, or $200/month for 5 seats. Devin Desktop's Team plan is $80/month base plus $40/month per full seat, or $280/month for 5 seats, making Cursor the cheaper option at that team size.
Can I use Claude or GPT models in either editor? Yes, both support multiple frontier models. Devin Desktop additionally supports running Codex or Claude Agent as the underlying agent through the Agent Client Protocol, not just as a model choice.
2 curated tools below.
Cursor AI is an AI-first, proprietary code editor built directly as a full fork of Microsoft's open-source Visual Studio Code (VS Code), meaning it natively retains all your favorite VS Code shortcuts, settings, and extensions while completely re-engineering the environment around artificial intelligence.
Windsurf is an AI-powered code editor (a VS Code fork) developed by Codeium. Its headline feature is Cascade, an AI agent that handles multi-file editing, planning, code generation, and terminal command execution. Positioned as a lower-cost alternative to Cursor, Windsurf offers unlimited autocomplete on the free tier and a flat $20/month Pro plan (vs. Cursor's variable pricing that can reach $35–60/month for heavy users).