Windsurf vs Cursor: which is the better AI code editor?

is wind surf a better AI IDE than cursor let's take a look if you like cursor's new agent mode that does not require you to specify files for context and can generate and run commands for you then you have Cascade to think that's wind surfer's built-in agent that's been doing this first wind surf generally has a cleaner and simpler set of uis that just feel that next level more polished than cursors wind surf is also cheaper starting at $15 a seat versus cursor's $20 a seat though I will say the pricing is a little bit more confusing with these things like model flow action credits whatever the heck that means both IDE support the standard features you'd expect like Aid Drven Auto completions chatting with your code base as well as generating and updating multiple files at a time which you can apply all with a click both idees support inline editing of code with AI as well both idees effectively have the same brain as they're using claw 3. 5 Sonet for the hard stuff I've noticed that functionally I don't see a major difference in the quality of code or anything generated by either of these idees and I don't expect two these really just uis on top of standard models when people try to compare this code generated better than that one it's my belief that they're mostly comparing the randomness of clot outputs both do use smaller models for the smaller edits and the inline completions but I similarly didn't find a major difference in the quality of one small model versus another overall wind surf really seems to push to be a very simple easyuse product that's beginner friendly and pushes for a high level simple interactions with your code the default chat mode is the agentic mode it indexes and pools relative of code as needed it'll run commands for you and it won't clutter the uis with buttons and code diffs everywhere in fact you won't see an inline diff at all you need to click the open diff button to see it in the full code pane whereas cursor leans towards more manual control the composer mode always defaults to normal instead of Agents which requires you to choose what files you want to put in the context for it to generate cursor will always show you inline code diffs as well and seems to push the point that you should always be reviewing this code every time one thing that winds surf does that I like a lot is by default they AI Generations are written to disk before you approve them that means you'll see the results right inside your Dev server in real time and you can use that to also see in real time if there's build errors in your Dev server if the updates still aren't quite right you can chat again to continue to modify before you accept the changes entirely and if you don't love the changes even after some iteration you can discard everything in one go compare that to cursor where you need to accept the changes before you can actually look at the UI and realize it looks terrible and now in order to revert that I need to scroll up and figure out where the chat started which some sometimes could be midway through a long thread and hard to find and then find this checkout button and hit that to revert to the prior sat in time overall the workflow is just a little bit clunkier in that regard and I think that's the case for cursor's UI in general for instance I didn't even know cursor could go back in time because I just didn't find that button clear and intuitive but when I hover over wind surf I get this nice little revert back toep button those little details do really make wind surf feel a little bit more polished and refined feels a little bit like using an Apple product versus a Microsoft product where cursor really shines is in a lot of its power features for instance cursor supports multi- tabbing so if it sees you make a change that would benefit from another change later in the code you can just hit Tab and tab again to keep applying those new changes I find this simultaneously very cool as well as often sometimes kind of clunky and confusing like how this code didn't actually complete into the right spot cursor generally takes a kitchen sink approach to AI in the IDE everything has an AI button see an error there's a fix with AI button drop down to options over here there's a fix with AI button error in the terminal there's a debug with AI button clicking these generally opens the chat and letss you go back and forth with the AI to fix the issue I find these useful but also sometimes they add clutter to the UI for instance I've had cases where these overlays are annoying and in the way and I can't dismiss them when I need to also one thing that drives me crazy is cursor hijacks command K in the terminal which means I can't use it to clear the terminal I also spent too long asking chat GPT how else I could clear the terminal without that shortcut and I didn't find one that exactly matches the behavior I'm used to I also didn't find a way incursor to override that and turn that off now that said haven't AI in the terminal that's command KOA at any point is really helpful if you're like me and just always forgetting the exact command names and arguments that I want especially for commands I don't use super often but I definitely need both idees let you specify custom rules to inform completions but cursor support is a bit more robust and flexible including the ability to add notepads you can search for and include in your context as needed generally speaking cursor is way more robust at context management both IDs let you tag certain files you want to include in the context but cursor lets you add whole doc sets like include the Tailwind docs specific pages from the web specific get branches and commits or even just tagging at web to do a web search to fill in context to try and fix the bug one other really cool feature of cursor is automatically generated commit messages with one simple click even better it respects prefences you put in your cursor rules so whereas I found the default output a bit ver both I said for commit messages keep it a little shorter and hey it's doing pretty great and saving me time another cool experimental feature of cursor is this new bugfinder where after an aggressive error message and a usage based pricing model where you pay a dollar or more just to click a button it'll scan through all the code and your working changes as well as if you're on a feature Branch comparing that to Main and look for possible bugs in the code for me it's actually found some really useful bugs and save me time having to find them and fix them any bug it finds it gives a confidence rating as well as an overview and you can just click a button to fix it in composer it'll fill the details into the prompts and generate updates like you're used to the main thing I wish both products had was an even more robust debugging Loop something like Devon promises and sometimes can achieve but right here in the IDE both say they have agents but I'm used to the idea of an agent being something that can try something evaluate it and repeat until it verifies that the result is correct which neither of them actually do they generate code and if you've got bugs it's your responsibility to go in and explain them and make sure they get fixed now luckily unlike the Zed editor wind Sur and cursor both support all vs code extensions because they're both just Forks of vs code so we can just download an extension like Klein and tell it to fix the errors in this file client will then get to work making a series of updates and most importantly actually verifying that it fixed everything if it finds new issues after the fix it'll automatically go in and fix that until it verifies everything's completed everything works as expected and it works great with both cursor and wind surf speaking of compatibility with other tools let's export this figma design to code builder. and I'll just copy this command and paste it into the windserve terminal I'll tell it to add a button to launch this on the homepage and here it'll generate the code that I wanted both ID support full terminal functionality like syntax highlighting and now I have my beautiful UI Pixel Perfect and using my components as expected and now I can hop into Cascade or cursor composer and tell it to hook up the signup form to my off logic This is the End to-end workflow I typically use grab the design have the agent add the logic make my updates autogenerate a commit message and fire up a PR honestly I don't think you can go wrong with either of these options both are fantastic idees that support AI Drven Auto completion inline editing multi-file editing chatting with your codebase lentic workflows where they can read and write to multiple files based on what you said and while I find Wind surf to be a little simpler a little more intuitive and a slightly nicer and more polished UI cursor is just loaded with power features and while all those buttons everywhere can add clutter I find it hard to let go of some of these features that I just love I love typing command K in my terminal to generate commands when I forget what I need I even love Sometimes using the multi- tpping when it works and while I'll suffer through some glitches in the UI for a professional development tool it's my personal preference for a more beginner developer or someone who really prefers UI polish wind serf is probably a better go-to it also has a lower starting point and if you're coming off a tool like bolt.

new wind surf will feel a lot more like what you're used to but hey that's just my opinion to read my full in-depth review of both tools head on over to my latest blog post in the builder. blog you'll find other reviews and rankings of AI tools over there but most important what do you think what is your favorite AI IDE if you've got opinions here you should check out the state of AI survey that just went live you can vote on your favorite idees Co Pilots chat tools and a whole bunch of others jump in there and let us all know what AI tools you think are best at state of a.