cursor vs windsurf

i’ve been using both windsurf & cursor back and forth on my projects and here’s what i felt:

cursor (agentic flow) is amazing

– agentic cursor is powerful when you set up your .cursorrule around the project. it really follows that base and delivers way better output.

– cursor + claude 3.5 always works for me when generating code—I get cleaner, more accurate snippets than with gpt-4o.

– cost-wise it’s the priciest: credits disappear fast if you let it run wild through agentic mode. and blindly accepting every change without checking which files got updated will literally be a nightmare :)

for enterprises: cursor ships with SOC 2 certification and a privacy mode so your code never gets stored remotely, plus you can swap between models (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, custom) and even bring your own API key [if needed].

windsurf

– crazy fast. even when i compare windsurf + claude 3.5 vs cursor + claude 3.5, windsurf spits out code way quicker (maybe it’s my illusion 😂, but the speed difference is legit).

– cost = $15/mo. cursor is $20/mo (or $16/mo on a yearly plan).

– simpler setup—less “magic” under the hood, so fewer surprises with unwanted errors. it offers on-prem for enterprise and zero-data-retention if you care about IP.

– windsurf’s cascade agent can write changes directly to disk so you see live updates before accepting diffs.

so here’s my final thought:

– cursor wins on complex, multistep tasks and context-heavy flows; windsurf wins when you just need quick, reliable code without a ton of config.

– both run inside vscode—they’re basically vscode clones under the hood, so the UI and feel are nearly identical.

– both support AI terminal commands, inline edits, auto-generated commit messages, and full extension compatibility via the VS Code marketplace.

TL;DR

both tools only really perform if you know the fundamentals & how to use them; otherwise it’s just another piece of software.

so that’s it.