Cursor vs Windsurf: tested on the same repo

Independent and hands-on. Some links are affiliate links — they never change our verdict.

We ran both editors on the same two tasks: a small feature in a codebase we wrote, and a bug fix in a large open-source repo we had never opened. Same prompts, same models where possible, June 2026. The result was not a knockout — it was a clean split. One tool won the familiar code, the other won the unfamiliar code, and the reason is the same single design choice.

Cursor vs Windsurf at a glance

Both are AI code editors built on VS Code, both route to Claude and GPT for hard work, and both sit in the $15–20/month range. As of June 2026 the table below is the whole comparison in one screen — the sections after it explain the rows that actually change your day.

Context handling: the only difference that matters

Cursor uses manual context: you tag files with @filename in chat and the model reads exactly those. Windsurf's Cascade uses automatic context: it indexes the whole repo and decides which files are relevant. In our June 2026 unfamiliar-repo test, Cascade found the relevant files in 30 seconds; Cursor required 4 minutes of manual searching before the first prompt.

This is the fork in the road. Cursor expects you to tell it what to read; Windsurf decides for you. As of June 2026 that single choice drives almost every other difference in feel, speed and cost.

In Cursor you tag files and folders with @so the model reads only what you point at. On a codebase you know, that is a feature: the AI never wastes tokens on irrelevant files, answers come back faster, and you can predict what it will touch. The cost is effort — you have to know which files matter, which slows you down on code you have never seen.

Windsurf's Cascade indexes the whole repository and pulls in what it thinks is relevant. On a large or unfamiliar project that is a real time-saver — you describe the change and it finds the files. The trade-off shows up on messy repositories, where it can confidently pull the wrong file and edit something you did not mean to touch. It also writes generations to disk before you approve them, so you preview changes live in your running app rather than in a diff.

The agent: Composer vs Cascade

Both ship an agent that plans and edits across files, but they hand you control at different moments. Cursor's Composer builds a plan, makes edits, and shows a diff you approve before anything lands. Windsurf's Cascade is more autonomous — it can run shell commands and write to disk first, so you see results live and roll back if you disagree. As of June 2026, Cursor feels safer for careful work and Cascade feels faster for momentum.

Which you prefer comes down to temperament. If you want to review every change like a pull request, Cursor's diff-then-approve loop fits. If you would rather watch the app change and course-correct, Cascade's write-first flow is less friction. Neither is wrong — they are two answers to "how much should the agent do before it asks you."

Pricing and limits

Cursor Pro is $20/month; Windsurf Pro is $15/month (sources: cursor.com/pricing and windsurf.com/pricing, June 2026). The $5/month gap is not the number to optimize — the limit that matters is the usage ceiling on the model you actually use most. Both have changed billing rules before; verify before committing.

As of June 2026, Cursor Pro is about $20/month and Windsurf starts around $15/month, and both keep a free tier you can do real work on. Do not pick on the $5 gap. The number that bites is the usage limit — Cursor meters agent requests, Windsurf meters credits or flow actions, and both have changed those rules more than once. A heavy day of agent use is where you feel the difference, not the monthly sticker.

Before you pay, run a normal day on each free tier and watch when you hit a wall. If you rarely trigger the agent, either free tier may be enough. If you live in the agent, price the tier on whether its request or credit ceiling survives your real workload. Always confirm current numbers on the officialCursor andWindsurf (now Devin Desktop) pages — pricing here is a snapshot.

IDE support and ecosystem

Cursor is its own editor — a VS Code fork you switch to. Windsurf has its own editor too, but also ships plugins for 40+ environments including JetBrains IDEs, Vim, Neovim and Xcode. As of June 2026, that makes Windsurf the only option of the two if you refuse to leave IntelliJ or Xcode. Cursor counters with the larger community: more tutorials, more shared rules files, more answers when you are stuck.

Speed and accuracy on a real task

On the familiar codebase, Cursor was the better tool. Because we knew which two files mattered, tagging them with @ gave fast, precise edits and no wasted context. On the large unfamiliar repo, that same manual step was the bottleneck — we did not know where the bug lived, so we spent time hunting before we could even prompt. Windsurf flipped it: Cascade indexed the repo, found the likely files, and got us to a working fix faster, at the cost of one wrong-file detour we had to undo.

That is the whole comparison in one sentence: Cursor is faster when you know the code, Windsurf is faster when you don't.This is a hands-on impression on two tasks, not a benchmark — your result shifts with repo size and how well you know it.

Which should you pick?

Two questions, one answer.

How we tested

We used each editor on the same two jobs in June 2026: adding a feature to a small app we built, and fixing a bug in a large open-source repository we had not opened before. We kept the model the same where each tool allowed it, used the paid tiers, and judged four things — time to a working change, how often we corrected the output, token or credit burn, and where each tool went wrong. Product facts come from the official Cursor and Windsurf sites; treat the timing as directional, not lab-grade.

FAQ

Read the full Cursor review andWindsurf review, see both in the best AI code editors, or read how we built the same app in all five tools. More: Cursor vs Bolt · Windsurf vs Bolt.