Two code & development tools, one decision. Here is the honest split.
| Cursor | Windsurf | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free plan |
| Best at | Multi-file changes, refactors, and "build me this feature" prompts that touch many files. | Letting an agent drive: scaffolding, migrations, and repetitive codebase-wide edits. |
| In short | An AI-first code editor that can edit across your whole codebase, not just autocomplete a line. | An agentic code editor (from the Codeium team) that plans and executes multi-step coding tasks. |
| On Atlas | 3 starter prompts | 3 starter prompts |
Pick Cursor when the job is Multi-file changes, refactors, and "build me this feature" prompts that touch many files.. Pick Windsurf when the job is Letting an agent drive: scaffolding, migrations, and repetitive codebase-wide edits.. Still torn? Run one real task through both free tiers. An hour of testing beats a week of reviews.
Here is my code: [paste code]. Find the three most likely bugs or edge cases, explain each in one sentence, then show the fixed code with tests.