Windsurf
Editor with a built-in agent, Cursor's closest rival. Cheaper plans.
Use it if
- You want an agent inside an editor and Cursor's price put you off
- You prefer watching edits land over reading a terminal summary
- You are trying the editor-agent idea for the first time
Skip it if
- You already have Cursor and are happy, because the difference is small
- You prefer a terminal agent like Claude Code or Codex
- You do not code yet, where a chat app is the kinder start
Windsurf is Cursor with a different badge. Both are code editors built on the VS Code base with an agent living inside, so you watch it edit files rather than read about it afterwards. They leapfrog each other on features every few months, and the honest summary is that they are the same idea executed well twice.
Where it fits
Same place as Cursor: you want an agent working on your project but not out of sight. If Cursor’s price was the thing stopping you, this is the obvious second look, because its plans have tended to be cheaper for similar limits.
What it is good at
The agent mode that works across several files and runs the result. Inline edits. The visibility that makes a first-time user comfortable, which is the whole argument for an editor over a terminal (a window where you type commands).
Honest limitations
I use Cursor for this role and have not run Windsurf properly, so this is orientation. The two are close enough that switching is a preference, not an upgrade. Both are whole editors, so adopting either means moving house, and both have the failure every agent has: confident when guessing, so read the diff (the before-and-after of each change).
Next step
Open one real project in it and give the agent a small job you already know the answer to. If you would rather stay in a terminal, Claude Code and Codex do the same work without moving editors.