Cursor vs Windsurf: which one to choose in 2026

Search for "cursor vs windsurf" in November 2026 and half the internet is out of date. Since June 2, 2026, Windsurf has been called Devin Desktop. Cognition renamed the editor and the change arrived as an automatic update for existing users, with plans, pricing, extensions and settings preserved. So the comparison that matters today is Cursor against Devin Desktop.

Both are still editors with an agent inside. What decides the choice comes down to three things: how much it costs to start, which models you can reach, and what happens when your usage runs out.

Short answer: if you want the lowest entry price, Cursor starts at US$ 8 per month, but on that tier you only get Grok models. If you want every model with nothing to configure, Devin Desktop starts at US$ 20. Both tie at the top, at US$ 200. If your problem is hitting the ceiling mid-sprint, neither one solves it, because both are metered.

Does Windsurf still exist in 2026?

Not as the editor's name. Devin Desktop is the same product under the Cognition brand, and the company states that only the name and visual identity changed.

Two things changed underneath. The local agent is no longer Cascade, it is Devin Local, rewritten in Rust, up to 30% more token efficient and with subagent support. The old Cascade kept working until July 1st, 2026. The editor also gained the Agent Command Center, a board view for tracking several agents at once.

If you work in JetBrains, Windsurf for JetBrains is still available for download. The full editor is still there, with extensions, keybindings and LSPs compatible with VS Code.

How much does each one cost?

Cursor has more price steps. Devin Desktop has fewer, and its first paid plan costs more than double Cursor's first paid plan.

Tier	Cursor	Devin Desktop (ex-Windsurf)
Free	US$ 0, limited usage	US$ 0, light agent quota, unlimited inline edits and Tab
Entry paid plan	US$ 8/month (Plus), Grok models only	US$ 20/month (Pro), all models
Mid tier	US$ 30/month (Premium, 4x the Plus quota) and US$ 100/month (Super, 15x)	Does not exist
Top individual plan	US$ 200/month (Ultra, 50x)	US$ 200/month (Max)
Team	From US$ 30 per user/month (Teams)	US$ 80/month base plus US$ 40 per full dev seat (Teams, up to 200 users)

Source: cursor.com/pricing and devin.ai/pricing, consulted on November 10, 2026. Prices in US dollars, excluding taxes.

Which one gives you access to more models?

It depends on the plan, and this is Cursor's catch. On Plus, at US$ 8, only Grok models are available. Third-party models start at Premium, US$ 30, and are billed per token at the API list price, outside the plan quota.

	Cursor	Devin Desktop
In-house model	Composer 2.5, at US$ 0.50 per million input tokens and US$ 2.50 per million output tokens	Devin Local, Cognition's local agent
Third-party models	Anthropic, [OI], Google, DeepSeek, Z.ai, Moonshot and Meta, from Premium up and billed by usage	All frontier models, included in the quota from Pro up
Model pairing	Manual choice in the model picker	Devin Fusion, which pairs a frontier lead model with a cheaper sidekick that executes
Third-party agents	Not the product's focus	ACP protocol, with Codex, Claude Agent and OpenCode pluggable

Source: cursor.com/docs/models and devin.ai/desktop, consulted on November 10, 2026.

What happens when your usage runs out?

Neither one is unlimited. Cursor gives you a weekly pool shared across the editor and Grok models, and it refreshes every week. When it runs out, you buy top-ups or wait for the reset. Devin Desktop gives you a quota that refreshes daily and weekly, and overage is billed at API pricing.

The practical difference is the shape of the bill. On Cursor, the plan ceiling is an amount of usage you can supplement with credit, with a configurable additional-spend limit. On Devin Desktop, the ceiling is an allowance with a defined overage price. In both cases, the bill grows with the work you do.

Can you use it in the terminal?

Cursor has its own CLI, installed with one command. Devin also has a CLI, but the install command is not published on the product page, so I will not paste a command I could not verify at the source.

curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash

After installing, the CLI binary lives in ~/.local/bin. To check the version:

agent --version

Commands verified at cursor.com/docs/cli/installation on November 10, 2026.

Which one should you pick for your workflow?

• You want the lowest entry cost and can live with Grok models: Cursor Plus, US$ 8.
• You switch models often and want Claude, [OI] and Gemini in the same editor: Cursor Premium and up, knowing third-party usage is billed separately.
• You want an agent that keeps running outside your machine: Devin Desktop, which hands sessions between the desktop and Devin Cloud with the session context intact.
• You already have third-party agents in your workflow: Devin Desktop, which accepts Codex, Claude Agent and OpenCode over the ACP protocol.

What changes if I already use Windsurf?

In practice, nothing you configured. The update arrives on its own, with extensions, keybindings, settings and in-progress work preserved. Plans stay the same, including legacy Enterprise contracts.

What you will notice is the new local agent. Cascade is gone and Devin Local takes over, with subagents and fewer tokens per task, according to Cognition. If your workflow depended on automation written on top of Cascade, that is the one point that needs review.

What if the ceiling is your real problem?

Then the choice between the two stops mattering. Cursor and Devin Desktop solve "more usage" with more expensive plans, not with unlimited usage: both stop at US$ 200 and keep metering consumption above the allowance.

Worth doing the math before you upgrade. Take the longest prompt you ran this week, run it on both, and see how much of the ceiling each one burns. If the results are close and the difference is only the invoice, your problem is not the editor, it is the ceiling.