Cursor vs Windsurf: which IDE agent to keep

Plan structure is the real difference

Cursor sells five individual tiers from $8 to $200 a month plus a $30/user team plan. Windsurf sells two: $20 Pro and $200 Max, with a team plan at $80 a month plus $40 per seat.

That shape matters more than the headline number. A 10-person team on Cursor Teams is about $300/month before usage overages. The same team on Windsurf Teams is $80 plus $400 — nearly double. But a solo developer who only needs the middle tier pays $20 either way.

Model access

Cursor's plans are built around Grok models, with third-party models available at API list price on top of the subscription. That is predictable if your team is Grok-first and can get expensive if it is not.

Windsurf, now inside Cognition's Devin family, sells access to frontier models from multiple providers as part of the plan, with extra usage purchasable at API pricing. The practical question is which models you actually need in the editor — most teams over-buy here.

Agent permissions

Both run agent actions with approval by default. Neither gives you an OS-level sandbox: the agent can read anything your user account can read, including .env files.

Cursor gates auto-run, browser and network controls to its Enterprise plan. Windsurf puts centralized billing and an admin dashboard on Teams, with SSO and dedicated deployment on Enterprise. If unapproved command execution is a compliance problem, neither default configuration solves it — you need policy plus review, not a product tier.