If you are comparing Cursor and Windsurf, the first thing to clear up is that one of the two is not called that any more.
On 2 June 2026, Cognition renamed Windsurf to Devin Desktop through an over-the-air update. It is the same editor, with the same plans and the same extensions, but almost every comparison you will find out there still describes a product with the old name and the old agent. This one is current.
Quick summary
| Cursor | Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes (Hobby) | Yes, with a daily quota |
| Paid entry | $20/mo (Pro) | $20/mo (Pro) |
| Tiers above that | $60 (Pro+), $200 (Ultra) | $200 (Max) |
| Teams | From $40/user/mo | Separate self-serve plans |
| In-house model | No, uses third-party models | Yes, SWE-1.5 |
| Cloud agent | Yes | Yes, on a shared quota |
| How spend is measured | Dollar pool of usage + overage billed later | Daily and weekly quotas + on-demand balance |
| Its strength | Writing alongside you | Delegating and supervising |
Pricing: the middle rung is the difference
Both cost $20 a month to start paying, so the decision is not there. It is in what happens when $20 stops being enough.
Cursor has a middle rung: Pro+ at $60 before you reach the $200 Ultra plan. If your usage grows, you can triple your budget without multiplying it by ten.
Devin Desktop does not. After Pro, the next individual plan is Max, at $200 outright. Either you live within the $20 quota or you take a tenfold jump.
For a freelancer or anyone coding on their own account, that gap matters more than it looks.
How spend is measured, which is not the same thing
This is the conceptual difference, and it is worth understanding before you pay, because the two tools slow you down in different ways.
Cursor gives you a pool of dollars. Your plan includes an amount of model usage; when you exhaust it, Cursor lets you keep working and bills the overage afterwards. The upside is that it does not block you mid-afternoon. The risk is a surprise at the end of the month if you are not watching.
Devin Desktop gives you quotas. Daily and weekly. When you exhaust them, you either move to an on-demand balance or you wait. The upside is predictability: you know what you will pay. The downside is being stopped halfway through a task.
And here is the detail that causes the most grief: Devin’s quota is shared between the editor, the Devin CLI and Devin cloud sessions. Fire off a couple of heavy tasks at cloud Devin in the morning and the editor’s agent runs on a leash in the afternoon. It is not three budgets, it is one.
The models: in-house versus the best on the market
Devin Desktop has its own model, SWE-1.5, and its local agent was rewritten from scratch in Rust as Devin Local, replacing the old Cascade. Cognition says it is roughly 30% more token-efficient than its predecessor; that is their figure and we have not measured it.
Cursor does not build models: it connects you to the best available at any given moment. Which means that when a better model ships, Cursor has it soon, without waiting on its own development cycle.
Two legitimate, opposite bets. An in-house model can be tuned to the tool and made cheaper; depending on third parties keeps you near the frontier.
With one new wrinkle, from late August 2026. On 14 August SpaceX acquired Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, and two weeks later OpenAI announced it will pull its models from the editor on 12 November. Cursor’s CEO puts those models at around 5% of traffic and Anthropic has already promised deeper Claude support, so the immediate impact is small.
But it does bear on the argument above: neutrality was Cursor’s edge, and its owner now builds models too. Not a reason to rule it out, but a reason to check in a few months which model comes selected by default.
Where each one wins
Cursor wins at writing alongside you. Its Tab autocomplete is still the market reference, and multi-file editing from natural-language instructions is its home ground. If your way of working is typing with an excellent copilot beside you anticipating what comes next, Cursor is the answer.
Devin Desktop wins at delegation. Since the rename, the main screen is the Agent Command Center: Spaces, a Kanban view and several agents at once. The product no longer assumes you are working on one task; it assumes you have three running and you review. It also supports ACP, an open protocol that lets third-party agents run inside the editor, so you are not married to its own.
One point in Devin Desktop’s favour that gets little attention: Tab autocomplete is unlimited on every one of its plans, the free one included. It is the feature you use most and it does not consume quota.
The free plans
Both have a real free plan, not a seven-day trial.
Cursor’s (Hobby) gives you the full editor with limited completions and agent requests. Devin Desktop’s runs on a daily quota with an on-demand balance on top, plus unlimited Tab.
If you are unsure, this is the easy part: install both and work a week with each. No card involved, and a week of real use answers better than any comparison, this one included.
Which to choose?
- You write and want the best copilot: Cursor
- You delegate tasks and review them: Devin Desktop
- Your usage grows and you do not want a $200 jump: Cursor, for the $60 rung
- You want to know exactly what you will pay: Devin Desktop, for the quotas
- You lean on the cloud agent a lot: careful with Devin Desktop, shared quota
- You want to always be on the newest model: Cursor
A third option worth knowing
If your worry is not writing code faster but not trusting blindly what the agent writes, neither of these attacks that problem head on.
Verdent does: it works from reviewable plans before touching anything and leaves a trail of what changed and why. Its $5/mo Lite plan is the cheapest entry point in the category, and it is not exclusive - plenty of people run it alongside their usual editor.