If you’re a developer like me who lives half your life in the terminal and the other half wrestling with large codebases, you’ve probably come across AI coding tools like Cursor and Windsurf. These aren’t your average Copilot clones — they promise deep repo understanding, intelligent code generation, and smoother workflows.
So, which one actually delivers?
After diving into community discussions and testing both firsthand, here’s my real-world breakdown.
🚀 Performance & Speed
Cursor is blazingly fast. It’s built on top of VS Code, so it feels familiar but souped-up. The autocomplete is snappy, and you can roll back AI changes with a single click. That’s a life-saver when things go weird.
Windsurf, on the other hand, sometimes struggles with lag — especially in autocomplete. But it’s constantly improving, and for many users, the extra thinking time is worth it.
🧩 Winner: Cursor for speed, especially if you care about real-time responsiveness.
🧠 Context Awareness
This is where Windsurf shines. Its ability to maintain context across large projects is impressive. It feels like the AI has actually read your entire repo and can reference things intelligently.
Cursor also does this well, especially with its Composer tool, which lets you orchestrate multi-step tasks. Still, a few users (myself included) have noticed some hallucinations — code that looks right but is totally off.
🧩 Winner: Windsurf, especially for full-feature builds and cross-file understanding.
🛠️ Workflow Features
- Cursor has a “Chat with your code” feature that’s surprisingly useful, plus rollback, commit generation, and debugging assistance.
- Windsurf focuses more on clean integration and repo-wide code suggestions. It’s a bit more minimalist, but solid where it counts.
🧩 Winner: Tie — depends on whether you like more features (Cursor) or simplicity (Windsurf).
💸 Pricing
- Cursor: $20/month (or $16/month if paid yearly)
- Windsurf: $15/month
Not a huge difference, but worth noting if you’re on a budget.
👀 Final Thoughts
| Feature | Winner |
|---|---|
| Speed | Cursor |
| Context Handling | Windsurf |
| Features | Tie |
| Pricing | Windsurf |
If you work on fast-moving projects and want tight Git/VS Code integration, Cursor is a solid choice.
If you’re handling massive repos and want the AI to feel like a true pair programmer, Windsurf might be your jam.
Either way, these tools are reshaping the way we write code — and the best part? They’re only getting better.