Windsurf

What it is

Windsurf (formerly Codeium IDE) blends inline AI with an agent it calls Cascade. Strong differentiator: model awareness of your active editing flow and recent changes.

Notes from using it

Cascade's flow-awareness is the genuine differentiator — the editor watches what you've changed in the last few minutes and suggests next-steps that account for that context. On big multi-file refactors this consistently lands closer to what you actually want than tab-completion-only assistants. It's the feature that makes power users prefer Windsurf over Cursor for that specific workflow.

The price gap is real. Pro at $15/mo is meaningfully below Cursor Pro for comparable capabilities. For solo developers and small price-sensitive teams, the math favors Windsurf.

The risks: model access has been bumpy in 2025-2026 — the Anthropic situation made some teams hesitant about depending on it as primary tooling. Plugin ecosystem is smaller than Cursor's, which matters if you've got a niche workflow that depends on a specific extension.

Where it shines

• Cheaper than Cursor for similar capabilities.
• Cascade's flow awareness shines on big refactors.

Where it falls down

• Smaller ecosystem and extension parity.
• Recent Anthropic API access spat created uncertainty.

Best fit for

If you're trying to put AI behind any of these functions, Windsurf is worth a look:

• AI for Code Review — PR review, refactor suggestions, test generation, on-call triage.