Thanks for all you do and helping this SQL Developer get started with these awesome AI coding tools. Also, thanks for not creating click-bait and giving honest opinions.
This is the ONLY review I've seen where the person truly goes in-depth instead of the usual theres-a-million-ides-and-the-new-shiny-one-beats-all. Had I seen this last week I would've saved myself leaving Cursor too quickly and having Windsurf mess up a week's worth of code. Cursor IS more reliable and better. And that's not even counting the new agentic feature
Thank you so much for doing those type of videos, I’ve been watching many of your videos and you’ve been a very valuable source of information! Looking forward to seeing the next review :)
Thanks for this. So many so-called “Cursor Killers” out there, but nothing comes close. Great to find an honest RUclipsr who knows his stuff. I tried running on the API key for a day. I burned through $45 in 6 hours. So Cursors $20 a month is a bargain. If it saved only 30 minutes a month compared to VSCode, it’s worth it.
Thank you!! Yeah the consistency and reliability is why I keep using Cursor. Kind of concerning seeing some folks mentioning issues with v0.43 but I haven't tried it yet (trying to get some other work stuff done first). Pro plan is easily worth it
Volo, you have done a fantastic and great job. Thanks for such content. Keep up the good work, your opinion and experience are very important and interesting.
Want to say - I'm a mid-sized startup CTO and this content is spot on. So many absolute trash surface-level "influencers" in the AI space. Leaving a comment and a like to boost you in the algorithm.
Thanks for the review. Seems fair and balancer to me. I just completed my first 10kLoC of Rust written by Windsurf. Basically, Windsurf nailed it most of the time. It wrote the implementation, all tests, all docs, all examples, benchmarks, profiled, and optimized the code. My favorite feature is that it can summarize all commits of the day as a well formatted PR message, which really makes a difference since I would otherwise write a one liner. The other thing that still boggles my my mind is that Windsurf somehow found a SIMD equivalent optimization that works on X86 and ARM64 even without using the underlying intrinsics. This is so next level that it's a very safe bet that in about a year or two, the vast majority of all software will be written by AI.
I don't like Windsurf much for now, BUT I'm sure it'll be much better than Cursor in nearest future. I just today realized that Windsurf is only two weeks after first release and Cursor is more than 1.5 years. So I'm excited to following up for releases and continue to compare them. For now I'm using both on Pro paid period.
@@VoloBuilds but there is a big issue for them - Cursor realized 0.43 patch where they have all Windsurf's features in composer and it's amazing. So I don't know how Windsurf will impress customers :(
@@sLavoncheg Yeah I'm about to try it out, but I heard that there are some issues with it and got mixed reviews. So maybe Windsurf agentic capabilities are still a step up. Will look into this in my next video!
Thanks for comparing in details, really useful. I noticed that Windsurf is buggy in Windows but works perfectly in MacOS, I have no idea why but i hope some1 can confirm this
I suspect this is true! Most sillicon valley devs of these tools are using 100% Macs so I wonder if the testing is lacking for Windows. In fact, I was able to fix my undo/redo line removal issue by manually configuring Windsurf to use "LF" instead of "CRLF" as the default line separator. This wasn't an issue in Cursor, so I didn't expect to have to change it here. Now I'm wondering what other bugs I saw that may not be an issue on Mac..
and remember, this windsurf is like just 2weeks ages compared to cursor with 1,5 years ages based on release date. to be honest, i will stop on cursor to switch to windsurf, i had good enough experience using it. and i love the way just analyze my company project which using 2017 reactjs. yes its mixed class component and functional component, but you know cursor is stuggle to handle it, sometimes it lost to a bad decision but windsurf does well perform on it. im sure they will get better and better in term of feature, just need a little bit of time they will have the same and competitive feature compare to cursor. or might be even better ? lets wait =)) btw great video , im happy that someone take a time to do a deep comparison on it =)
Thank you! You're absolutely right - it's a brand new product, and honestly I was pleasantly surprised, especially by the agentic capabilities. The automatic file identification is great. I'm excited to review them again in the future as they fix bugs and iterate on some of the features!
Thank you! I've got a few on my list to revisit: bolt.new, v0, replit - and also a few new ones I haven't tried yet: Cline, Lovable, and Aide. Let me know if you know of any others worth reviewing!
@ I’ll give that a try, thanks! I tried Cursor: attempt update and it didn’t do anything. Kind of clunky that you have to download the full installer. I’m guessing the update process is in their roadmap.
@@VoloBuilds I went and grabbed the latest installer and I'm on version 0.43.3. I don't see anything mentioning the agent stuff. This upgrade process isn't that great. I went to the website to find some kind of Whats new section and don't see any documentation on the new functionality. Nothing in the forum either. They need to work on their documentation and the update process or I think Windsurf will end up eating their lunch.
Very good review. Worth noticing as well you can lose time with some of those tools by actually hiting your head on the wall sometimes instead of getting the job done “by hand”
Thanks for the video! What about quality of the code? I think this is one of the most important thing. It would be nice to compare how they handle real project with same prompts. How they structure project, which one use more classes instead of functions or some design patterns, etc. I know this is vastly depends on the model, but sometimes different system prompt can give you totally different results.
I think this is a fair review from an experienced developer. For me as a non programmer windsurf pulls way ahead simply because I was able to make my first app and have zero programming knowledge or even how to use VS code interface. I tried cursor and while the interface was the same the experience was not. I think a fair way to describe the experience is Cursor is like driving a manual transmission while Windsurf is automatic, with fully autonomous driving as the holy grail we should strive for.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience from this different perspective! You're right - as an experienced dev, it can be hard for me to fully imagine being a total beginner. Which is why the video I did with my wife was so funny to me - it did not go as I expected, and we ended up sifting through a ton of basics but apparently it was really helpful to a lot of other beginners! Good analogy btw - and totally agree about the ultimate goal of full automation.
Windsurf is like having a grad student coding for you, except that student studied geography. It's code completion and hinting is ok, cascade however needs a good kick in the arse.
@ Still doing this way. I'm in my 50s, The last time I did any development myself was at the end of the 20th century, Now I'm doing full-stack development with GoLang and Svelte thanks to cursor.
This is an excellent comparison. I'll still stick to cursor for now despite the v0.43 fiasco. Windsurf is around two weeks old afaik and looks so promising though. Edit: I gave Windsurf a try. The lack of WSL support is a massive dealbreaker for me. Will be sticking with cursor for now. Had high hopes going in. What a shame.
Yeah v0.43 has been a bit sketchy so far but I'm still primarily using Cursor at the moment. Windsurf is iterating quickly though - they just added image support yesterday. Will have to re-evaluate as both tools mature. Also going to check out some other tools and do more of these reviews
really great review, thank you!!. For a full-time developer, the 20-dollar plan of Cursor with a limit of 500 requests per month feels too restrictive. On the other hand, Windsurf is only 10 dollars per month with no request limit, making it far superior at the moment. (Of course, I understand this might not be a sustainable pricing model.) I think it would have been better if the video mentioned Windsurf's overwhelming advantage in terms of request limits at this point. I have a question: Does Cursor's 40-dollar plan allow for almost unlimited requests, or is there a limit of 1,000 requests?
Thank you! I did upgrade to $40/mo for Cursor but was rarely hitting the 500 requests/mo for whatever reason. Maybe I just use a lot of auto-complete and not too much context/small prompts? Not sure! But the 500 isn't an actual limit because you actually have unlimited requests - but they just get queued. Usually the queue is 10 seconds or less, so it's not terrible. Also, I don't think the Cursor requests are the same as the Windsurf requests - because they are 1000 "steps" and one request is likely to take multiple steps. There is no clarity regarding how much you've used and what happens when you hit 1000.
Agreed. I’ve used Cursor extensively and Windsurf and feel Cline is the best and most autonomous. Definitely do a video comparison with that @VoloBuilds! I think you will like it
Volo, thanks for the review, really helps a lot. AI IDEs are evolving very fast. I got the impression that the possibility of using a local LLM such as Qwen 2.5 7B, 32B is somehow not discussed. Although it is very important for beginners. As far as I understand Cursor can connect to a local Ollama or LM Studio server via an API Gateway such as Ngrok. Can Windsurf use local LLM?
Glad it helped! Windsurf doesn't have configurable LLMs right now, so you can't run local models with it as far as I can tell. I have not focused on local LLMs since in my experience Sonnet 3.5 is unbeatable and the open solutions haven't come close to the code quality. I also don't fully understand the usecases for when it would be necessary. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about local models and what is the use case you are considering them for?
@@VoloBuilds It's simple, comparing different LLMs, setting up a local infrastructure. OpenSource LLM is Free, unlimited number of tokens. Perhaps privacy is important to some. Of course, after a beginner gets stable work you can switch to top proprietary LLMs such as Claude Sonet 3.5, GPT O1, 4o and so on.
@@AndrewBashtovoy Yeah my thinking is like - if you're coding and it saves you one hour per month, $10 or $20 is easily justified - and let's be real, these things save MUCH more time than that! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
@@VoloBuilds I'll even say more, it not only saves time but also lowers the threshold of entry into the programming profession. We see a shift of focus from syntax to abstractions. Here would be a very interesting video comparing code quality of OpenSource LLM vs proprietary LLMs
Windsurf seems to be aware of your entire project and seems to be able to take all your project files as context, which is insanely powerful. That does seem to make it somewhat slower than Cursor, but the advantage is worth it. Having to add files manually as context seems like a pain. So this is something where Windsurf is better than Cursor. Windsurf might improve in the future and become faster and Cursor might add full project awareness like Windsurf, so I expect these two code editors to grow towards each other in terms of features and speed. The competition between code editors is going to be fierce.
Yeah definitely see some fierce competition - like Cursor releasing Agents right after the Windsurf release! It actually includes a lot of that project awareness you're talking about, but I don't think it's quite as good at that as Windsurf. Just made a video on it, should be up tomorrow!
Thank you for the interesting information you share with us. I have never subscribed to Windsurf AI. Is the subscription process hassle-free, especially when it comes to canceling it?"
Thank you! I am not sure but guessing it's similar to other apps. They're a reputable company so I expect you'd be able to get support if there are any issues.
I need to try it! Been hearing lots of good things
2 месяца назад
Great video! How about a similar review of Cline? Price is also an important factor. Cursor is after all, twice the cost of Windsurf, and cline is free (*) 😅
Yes, will do one of Cline at some point soon! Price is important, but when you consider how much time these tools save and how valuable software is - saving half an hour per month justifies the cost. So to me they are all in a similar price category. Also, it's hard to compare Cursor and Windsurf price apples to apples because Cursor measures "requests" and Windsurf measures "steps" and I don't think they are the same. It's also unclear what happens when you reach Windsurf 1000 step cap - whereas with Cursor we know it just goes to unlimited slow requests (so unlimited usage for the $20/mo)
2 месяца назад
@@VoloBuilds very good points :) I'm liking Windsurf more than cursor for now and have a Cline agent configured with a free Gemini key on both that I use whenever I feel windsurf gets stuck or am unsure about its results. I've also had them tackle the same bug after each other as a peer review a few times. Works pretty well!
I'm a Pro subscriber to Cursor. Would definitely try Windsurf but they lack WSL support which is a no-go. They also lack multimodal prompt capabilities. Cline: heard a lot of good things but it didn't produce a working program for me where cursor did. So I'll be with cursor for the moment.
Oh interesting! I didn't realize they are missing WSL support. But yeah they really need to add the image upload. Thanks for sharing your experience w/ Cline - I've had a lot of ppl suggest that one to me; will be checking it out soon.
I am leaving Cursor after months of heavy use, it suffers from a lot of hallucination which require a lot of careful prompt engineering. i am more impressed by the last bolt.new update and i am running it locally on a 4070ti for free.
@AbouAnia out of curiosity. I've asked a few people. Have you been able to fully create a react or next js page? Or do you still need to port it into cursor/windsurf and finish?
I had trouble getting bolt to create functional code and the chat disappears if you leave the conversation, so I had issues using it. I will probably go back to it to give it a more thorough evaluation. Any tips to achieve success with Bolt?
2 месяца назад+1
I have a question: should I pay for cursor/windsurf only or cursor/windsurf and claude/openai models?
Haha yeah this is a tough question. Lots of overlap but each has its own form factor and UX so it's hard to choose. I am currently subscribed to all of them 💀😭
good video but one point: when you give the scores, you should give them both together. very hard to follow "i give cursor 8" ........ and what about windsurf? I have to wait 4:21 minutes to know?
Haha fair enough; my intent was to justify the score before giving it, so there's a tradeoff where the stuff I said about the first one is easier to forget. But maybe I could go back and forth more quickly. Have to think about it. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
i think you should put more weight on the coding side than interface/prices/etc.., at the end of the day, devs care about the results, also you are very generous with the scores, id probably give them ~20-30 range so far.
I see where you're coming from and that's a fair point. All solutions on the market are pretty low (negligible tbh) price for the amount of value I get out of them. But I could easily imagine an expensive solution that just chugs code all day all night and builds a truly enterprise piece of software for like $500 or something. I wanted the value metric to account for that possibility, which I think will come on the market at some point soon-ish. As far as UI stuff, these tools should make it easy to get stuff done as you said - but if the UI sucks, it's hard to do that, and for people new to building software that's potentially the most significant category. So I try to have some balance. There are plenty of categories surrounding the actual output and achieving results. Btw I am following this rubric (which I created) so the scores are based on specific criteria that I feel the software meets or does not meet: volobuilds.github.io/VoloScore/
Back in September I was using Cursor. After about 600 lines including spaced lines, Cursor went off the rails and became unusable. My prompts were very explicit and put in disclaimers on not to change code...but cursor still did whatever it wanted.
Yeah this is a big problem with current AI coding tools - and I think it is related to the Apply models that take the LLM responses and map it to the actual code. I strongly urge people to make their files smaller (300 lines or less) to get optimal performance from these tools.
The only reason why I recommend using windsurf. It messes up less often. It doesn't insert stuff or create incorrect directories which break your program. Being new this was my issue. Windsurf has helped a lot with that.
Yeah Cursor has consistently been at the top of the stack for a while now and I'm really excited to try out their Agent solution - I wonder if they finally cracked it. Many other Agent-based solutions generally spin their wheels and make a lot of mistakes, which is why I was excited to see how well the Windsurf agents worked. Not perfect, but better than other agentic solutions so far.
The reason I still prefer Cursor is that I can screenshot and paste an image into chat/composer to quickly inform Claude what I want. I couldn't simply paste an image into Windsurf.
I've been using paid windsurf and cancelled my cursor subscription. I use the image I put often and it's definitely useful. But I prefer windsurf still. So I swap for a quick input result and go back.
@javier01 same here. It's interesting that they don't have a .cursorrules equivalent or an image function. But I'd assume this will be fixed soon enough. Cursor taught me a lot already. No hate. But ws just seems more consistent for sure.
Yes - from a practical perspective, this is a significant feature that definitely sets Cursor apart. Windsurf dev team did say they are working on it, so hopefully we'll see it soon!
If you are new to coding, Windsurf has a slightly easier learning curve and does more thanks to the agentic capabilities. But if you've coded before and now switching to AI coding tools, I'd suggest Cursor since I find it to be stronger overall (currently).
Nocode builder, windsurf is easy to use esp with large projects, in cursor I seem to hit limit faster for free plan. Context+ file structure+codes+dependencies= you're done.
Interesting; I feel like I code pretty frequently but I am not really hitting these limits. I did upgrade to $40/mo though and I don't use docs too frequently so perhaps it's the way I use it. The windsurf 1000 steps thing needs clarification; I have no idea how quickly it is reached or what happens when you reach it
@VoloBuilds sometimes it tends to hallucinate once the thread gets long. Using the revert feature(on the prompt that messed things up) and ending the conversation has proven to be effective. In order to continue just start a new cascade convo and ask it to CD into your directory to get context. Then you can continue building
That's true - although I feel the new Cursor agent rollout has been a bit of a mess.. I shared my thoughts on that in this video: ruclips.net/video/ctn3mvDo22E/видео.html
@VoloBuilds GPT Pilot (Pythagora) is better.. Since last year it has already been integrated with most of the features mentioned in this video, in addition to being the pioneer in being 100% multi-agent based. You should seriously give it a chance.
Many of the features are shared yeah, but Windsurf did have the edge on the Autonomy front. Now Cursor released Agents so I have my hands full working on the next video :)
I use gpt o1-preview a bit during the design phase. Its answers are pretty good, but the details are still 100% wrong, all of the time. At best, it throws in some decent ideas, wrapped in a pile of inaccurate and misleading ideas. The rest of my workload has increased dramatically thanks to AI - other devs using cursor and whatever else to generate “almost done” patches that need to be reviewed.. fixed .. or just rewritten from scratch The number of PRs per sprint has gone up, but productivity- if measured in terms of production quality releases - is way in the toilet
Yea I have noticed that the AI tools are kind of like a multiplier - so when you multiple low quality work it just makes things worse. Teams need to find ways to control quality - it's tempting to just push push push but then you'll end up in a mess. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I hope you provide an update on this, volo. Codeium's shady and unpredictable pricing (which got updated today) drags me away from windsurf and their pro plan is now up 5 dollars to 15. And the irony is that their pro plan is confusingly rate capped by not 1 but 2 different rate limits - and if you exceed them you'll need to buy credits for 10$ a bunch. It killed the IDE for me.
Yeah the pricing thing was a bit of a mess although I think they did the best they could given their situation - I imagine people were burning through credits - and they gave people unlimited credits to keep the momentum going. Hopefully they figure out what is sustainable for them. I think Cursor's idea of having a cap + unlimited slow queued requests is the right approach
I don't know about images, but in response to 2:43 you can give it documentation for context. I create a masterplan.md file, then create an instructions folder + instructions md file, then drag in my masterplan doc and tell Cascade to load it into instructions.md. From then on Cascade knows to reference the codebase _and_ the instructions.
I was referring to Documentation which Cursor has out of the box (docs for various standard libraries/frameworks). Windsurf doesn't currently have that - but you are right that there is a workaround to achieve a similar effect by adding the file to your repository and then referencing it - either through directly tagging, or having an index sort of file that tells it what it should reference. I believe this is still more friction than what Cursor enables, but thank you for sharing the workaround!
I actually struggled more with Undo/Redo than anything in Windsurf. I do like the Accept All / Reject All, but keep in mind it only works if you don't make any additional changes afterwards. The undo/redo stack is linear so it can't possibly "pull out" changes it made after you made additional ones. Cursor also has accept all/reject all in the composer, but I tend not to use it. Will be giving it a more thorough try with v0.43 though.
I found the auto-complete completely distracting in Cursor. I had to turn it off. It was often suggesting incorret things especially in Rust and it would throw me off. Furthermore, I didn't like how Cursor messed up my VSCode installation.
Yeah I can definitely see that - and tbh it still happens to me sometimes too (more so when I was first starting to use it though). I sometimes toggle it off, but usually it's pretty good at predicting what I want to do
Windsurf was working very good but the last days it's doing everything wrong even the most basic programming tasks I don't know if it's Claude, but there is definitely something changed. It's not good anymore, I hope they do something about it.
@@VoloBuilds I just downloaded it myself a little ago so haven't tried it yet but I noticed it wasnt an option in chat and its not anywhere in the settings anymore.
This is what a review should be about not emotional click-baitey mess like Theo's pseudo-review. Bro should just stick to article recitation like Primeagen.
Damn, that's unfortunate - I've heard the sentiment a few times. A bit anxious about upgrading :) And of course the hype guys are all saying "this is AGI" and "changes everything" (as always) 😅
I'm not sponsored or invested in any coding tool, if that's what you're implying. There are definitely some areas where Windsurf is better (as discussed in the video) - but I'm curious what your favorite parts of it are
I have $220 maxed out Cursor account. Can’t go over at 5000 fast requests. I would give Cursor a 2.5 at this point and Windsurf and Aide a 1 for new idea teasers and starting competition.
Thanks for all you do and helping this SQL Developer get started with these awesome AI coding tools. Also, thanks for not creating click-bait and giving honest opinions.
Thank you so much, Mike! Really appreciate your support :)
This is the ONLY review I've seen where the person truly goes in-depth instead of the usual theres-a-million-ides-and-the-new-shiny-one-beats-all. Had I seen this last week I would've saved myself leaving Cursor too quickly and having Windsurf mess up a week's worth of code. Cursor IS more reliable and better. And that's not even counting the new agentic feature
Thank you very much! Glad it was helpful and I'm excited to try out the new Cursor Agents and share my thoughts
@VoloBuilds looking forward to the video too
Git
Hey Volo! Such a great comparison video! Thanks for all the info, I really value your opinion! Jason
Thanks Jay! Appreciate your support :)
Thank you so much for doing those type of videos, I’ve been watching many of your videos and you’ve been a very valuable source of information! Looking forward to seeing the next review :)
Thank you very much! I'm gonna be taking a look at the Cursor Agents next; really curious to see how they compare to the Windsurf agentic capabilities
@@VoloBuilds I can't wait to see what you find!
Thanks for this. So many so-called “Cursor Killers” out there, but nothing comes close. Great to find an honest RUclipsr who knows his stuff. I tried running on the API key for a day. I burned through $45 in 6 hours. So Cursors $20 a month is a bargain. If it saved only 30 minutes a month compared to VSCode, it’s worth it.
Thank you!! Yeah the consistency and reliability is why I keep using Cursor. Kind of concerning seeing some folks mentioning issues with v0.43 but I haven't tried it yet (trying to get some other work stuff done first). Pro plan is easily worth it
Volo, you have done a fantastic and great job. Thanks for such content. Keep up the good work, your opinion and experience are very important and interesting.
Thank you, Serhii! Appreciate your support :)
That was an excellent comparison, thank you for this video, I got really good value out of it!
You're very welcome! Thanks for watching
Want to say - I'm a mid-sized startup CTO and this content is spot on. So many absolute trash surface-level "influencers" in the AI space. Leaving a comment and a like to boost you in the algorithm.
Really appreciate it! You rock!
Thanks for the review. Seems fair and balancer to me.
I just completed my first 10kLoC of Rust written by Windsurf. Basically, Windsurf nailed it most of the time. It wrote the implementation, all tests, all docs, all examples, benchmarks, profiled, and optimized the code. My favorite feature is that it can summarize all commits of the day as a well formatted PR message, which really makes a difference since I would otherwise write a one liner. The other thing that still boggles my my mind is that Windsurf somehow found a SIMD equivalent optimization that works on X86 and ARM64 even without using the underlying intrinsics. This is so next level that it's a very safe bet that in about a year or two, the vast majority of all software will be written by AI.
Nice, that is impressive! Glad you enjoyed the review
I don't like Windsurf much for now, BUT I'm sure it'll be much better than Cursor in nearest future. I just today realized that Windsurf is only two weeks after first release and Cursor is more than 1.5 years.
So I'm excited to following up for releases and continue to compare them. For now I'm using both on Pro paid period.
Yeah it's quite impressive for how brand new it is!
@@VoloBuilds but there is a big issue for them - Cursor realized 0.43 patch where they have all Windsurf's features in composer and it's amazing. So I don't know how Windsurf will impress customers :(
@@sLavoncheg Yeah I'm about to try it out, but I heard that there are some issues with it and got mixed reviews. So maybe Windsurf agentic capabilities are still a step up. Will look into this in my next video!
@@VoloBuilds enable lint check in settings as beta and that’s too cool to be real. It fixes errors itself 🧠
Thanks for comparing in details, really useful. I noticed that Windsurf is buggy in Windows but works perfectly in MacOS, I have no idea why but i hope some1 can confirm this
I suspect this is true! Most sillicon valley devs of these tools are using 100% Macs so I wonder if the testing is lacking for Windows. In fact, I was able to fix my undo/redo line removal issue by manually configuring Windsurf to use "LF" instead of "CRLF" as the default line separator. This wasn't an issue in Cursor, so I didn't expect to have to change it here. Now I'm wondering what other bugs I saw that may not be an issue on Mac..
and remember, this windsurf is like just 2weeks ages compared to cursor with 1,5 years ages based on release date. to be honest, i will stop on cursor to switch to windsurf, i had good enough experience using it. and i love the way just analyze my company project which using 2017 reactjs. yes its mixed class component and functional component, but you know cursor is stuggle to handle it, sometimes it lost to a bad decision but windsurf does well perform on it.
im sure they will get better and better in term of feature, just need a little bit of time they will have the same and competitive feature compare to cursor. or might be even better ? lets wait =))
btw great video , im happy that someone take a time to do a deep comparison on it =)
Thank you! You're absolutely right - it's a brand new product, and honestly I was pleasantly surprised, especially by the agentic capabilities. The automatic file identification is great. I'm excited to review them again in the future as they fix bugs and iterate on some of the features!
I’d love to see you do basically all of the ai code gen systems I like this framework
Thank you! I've got a few on my list to revisit: bolt.new, v0, replit - and also a few new ones I haven't tried yet: Cline, Lovable, and Aide. Let me know if you know of any others worth reviewing!
I started using Windsurf over the weekend. Amazing stuff using the free one. Pro is 10 bucks cheaper than Cursor so I might make the switch.
Yeah it's an impressive product. I'm curious to see how the new Cursor Agents stack up.
Me too but it hasn’t rolled to me yet. Curious to see if Azure integration works after the update. That would be a big one for me.
I found you can download the new version if you go to the website directly and re-download it as if you don't have it yet!
@ I’ll give that a try, thanks! I tried Cursor: attempt update and it didn’t do anything. Kind of clunky that you have to download the full installer. I’m guessing the update process is in their roadmap.
@@VoloBuilds I went and grabbed the latest installer and I'm on version 0.43.3. I don't see anything mentioning the agent stuff. This upgrade process isn't that great. I went to the website to find some kind of Whats new section and don't see any documentation on the new functionality. Nothing in the forum either. They need to work on their documentation and the update process or I think Windsurf will end up eating their lunch.
Great review . Your experience is similar to mine
Thank you, Chian!
2160p 4k looks good!
Very good review. Worth noticing as well you can lose time with some of those tools by actually hiting your head on the wall sometimes instead of getting the job done “by hand”
Thank you!
This is awesome code editor. Thanks for this video bro.
For sure! Let me know if you have anything you'd like to learn more about!
Thanks for the video! What about quality of the code? I think this is one of the most important thing. It would be nice to compare how they handle real project with same prompts. How they structure project, which one use more classes instead of functions or some design patterns, etc. I know this is vastly depends on the model, but sometimes different system prompt can give you totally different results.
Yep, quality is definitely important - and that is covered by the "Output Quality" category of the Volo Score!
@VoloBuilds yeah, it's covered, but at very surface level. It would be nice to compare how they both handle real projects with the same prompts
I think this is a fair review from an experienced developer. For me as a non programmer windsurf pulls way ahead simply because I was able to make my first app and have zero programming knowledge or even how to use VS code interface. I tried cursor and while the interface was the same the experience was not. I think a fair way to describe the experience is Cursor is like driving a manual transmission while Windsurf is automatic, with fully autonomous driving as the holy grail we should strive for.
Good analogy. I'm too a beginner. Will try out Windsurf. Thanks
Thank you so much for sharing your experience from this different perspective! You're right - as an experienced dev, it can be hard for me to fully imagine being a total beginner. Which is why the video I did with my wife was so funny to me - it did not go as I expected, and we ended up sifting through a ton of basics but apparently it was really helpful to a lot of other beginners! Good analogy btw - and totally agree about the ultimate goal of full automation.
Cursor has "Composer" that is kinda-automatic like too
Great comparison!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Windsurf is like having a grad student coding for you, except that student studied geography. It's code completion and hinting is ok, cascade however needs a good kick in the arse.
I'm using both. It's like two developers working together on same repo. Writing together solves most problems.
Haha very cool - are you still doing this or gravitating towards one or the other more now?
@ Still doing this way. I'm in my 50s, The last time I did any development myself was at the end of the 20th century, Now I'm doing full-stack development with GoLang and Svelte thanks to cursor.
This is an excellent comparison. I'll still stick to cursor for now despite the v0.43 fiasco. Windsurf is around two weeks old afaik and looks so promising though.
Edit: I gave Windsurf a try. The lack of WSL support is a massive dealbreaker for me. Will be sticking with cursor for now. Had high hopes going in. What a shame.
Yeah v0.43 has been a bit sketchy so far but I'm still primarily using Cursor at the moment. Windsurf is iterating quickly though - they just added image support yesterday. Will have to re-evaluate as both tools mature. Also going to check out some other tools and do more of these reviews
really great review, thank you!!. For a full-time developer, the 20-dollar plan of Cursor with a limit of 500 requests per month feels too restrictive. On the other hand, Windsurf is only 10 dollars per month with no request limit, making it far superior at the moment. (Of course, I understand this might not be a sustainable pricing model.) I think it would have been better if the video mentioned Windsurf's overwhelming advantage in terms of request limits at this point. I have a question: Does Cursor's 40-dollar plan allow for almost unlimited requests, or is there a limit of 1,000 requests?
Thank you! I did upgrade to $40/mo for Cursor but was rarely hitting the 500 requests/mo for whatever reason. Maybe I just use a lot of auto-complete and not too much context/small prompts? Not sure! But the 500 isn't an actual limit because you actually have unlimited requests - but they just get queued. Usually the queue is 10 seconds or less, so it's not terrible.
Also, I don't think the Cursor requests are the same as the Windsurf requests - because they are 1000 "steps" and one request is likely to take multiple steps. There is no clarity regarding how much you've used and what happens when you hit 1000.
Would love to see you score Cline (plugin for VSCode)
Thanks for the suggestion!
Agreed. I’ve used Cursor extensively and Windsurf and feel Cline is the best and most autonomous. Definitely do a video comparison with that @VoloBuilds! I think you will like it
Volo, thanks for the review, really helps a lot. AI IDEs are evolving very fast. I got the impression that the possibility of using a local LLM such as Qwen 2.5 7B, 32B is somehow not discussed. Although it is very important for beginners. As far as I understand Cursor can connect to a local Ollama or LM Studio server via an API Gateway such as Ngrok. Can Windsurf use local LLM?
Glad it helped! Windsurf doesn't have configurable LLMs right now, so you can't run local models with it as far as I can tell. I have not focused on local LLMs since in my experience Sonnet 3.5 is unbeatable and the open solutions haven't come close to the code quality. I also don't fully understand the usecases for when it would be necessary. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about local models and what is the use case you are considering them for?
@@VoloBuilds It's simple, comparing different LLMs, setting up a local infrastructure. OpenSource LLM is Free, unlimited number of tokens. Perhaps privacy is important to some. Of course, after a beginner gets stable work you can switch to top proprietary LLMs such as Claude Sonet 3.5, GPT O1, 4o and so on.
@@AndrewBashtovoy Yeah my thinking is like - if you're coding and it saves you one hour per month, $10 or $20 is easily justified - and let's be real, these things save MUCH more time than that! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
@@VoloBuilds I'll even say more, it not only saves time but also lowers the threshold of entry into the programming profession. We see a shift of focus from syntax to abstractions. Here would be a very interesting video comparing code quality of OpenSource LLM vs proprietary LLMs
Windsurf seems to be aware of your entire project and seems to be able to take all your project files as context, which is insanely powerful. That does seem to make it somewhat slower than Cursor, but the advantage is worth it.
Having to add files manually as context seems like a pain. So this is something where Windsurf is better than Cursor.
Windsurf might improve in the future and become faster and Cursor might add full project awareness like Windsurf, so I expect these two code editors to grow towards each other in terms of features and speed.
The competition between code editors is going to be fierce.
Yeah definitely see some fierce competition - like Cursor releasing Agents right after the Windsurf release! It actually includes a lot of that project awareness you're talking about, but I don't think it's quite as good at that as Windsurf. Just made a video on it, should be up tomorrow!
Thank you for the interesting information you share with us. I have never subscribed to Windsurf AI. Is the subscription process hassle-free, especially when it comes to canceling it?"
Thank you! I am not sure but guessing it's similar to other apps. They're a reputable company so I expect you'd be able to get support if there are any issues.
what about cline (for agentic abilities) + cursor?
I need to try it! Been hearing lots of good things
Great video! How about a similar review of Cline?
Price is also an important factor. Cursor is after all, twice the cost of Windsurf, and cline is free (*) 😅
Yes, will do one of Cline at some point soon! Price is important, but when you consider how much time these tools save and how valuable software is - saving half an hour per month justifies the cost. So to me they are all in a similar price category. Also, it's hard to compare Cursor and Windsurf price apples to apples because Cursor measures "requests" and Windsurf measures "steps" and I don't think they are the same. It's also unclear what happens when you reach Windsurf 1000 step cap - whereas with Cursor we know it just goes to unlimited slow requests (so unlimited usage for the $20/mo)
@@VoloBuilds very good points :)
I'm liking Windsurf more than cursor for now and have a Cline agent configured with a free Gemini key on both that I use whenever I feel windsurf gets stuck or am unsure about its results. I've also had them tackle the same bug after each other as a peer review a few times. Works pretty well!
I'm a Pro subscriber to Cursor. Would definitely try Windsurf but they lack WSL support which is a no-go. They also lack multimodal prompt capabilities.
Cline: heard a lot of good things but it didn't produce a working program for me where cursor did. So I'll be with cursor for the moment.
Oh interesting! I didn't realize they are missing WSL support. But yeah they really need to add the image upload. Thanks for sharing your experience w/ Cline - I've had a lot of ppl suggest that one to me; will be checking it out soon.
I am leaving Cursor after months of heavy use, it suffers from a lot of hallucination which require a lot of careful prompt engineering. i am more impressed by the last bolt.new update and i am running it locally on a 4070ti for free.
I ran into bolt getting error loops and not resolving. Were you able to make something fully functional or just a template?
@ bolt is way better
@AbouAnia out of curiosity. I've asked a few people. Have you been able to fully create a react or next js page? Or do you still need to port it into cursor/windsurf and finish?
@@chriscotton4207 do you mean using bolt? well i guess using VS code after
I had trouble getting bolt to create functional code and the chat disappears if you leave the conversation, so I had issues using it. I will probably go back to it to give it a more thorough evaluation. Any tips to achieve success with Bolt?
I have a question: should I pay for cursor/windsurf only or cursor/windsurf and claude/openai models?
Haha yeah this is a tough question. Lots of overlap but each has its own form factor and UX so it's hard to choose. I am currently subscribed to all of them 💀😭
good video but one point: when you give the scores, you should give them both together. very hard to follow "i give cursor 8" ........ and what about windsurf? I have to wait 4:21 minutes to know?
Haha fair enough; my intent was to justify the score before giving it, so there's a tradeoff where the stuff I said about the first one is easier to forget. But maybe I could go back and forth more quickly. Have to think about it. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
i think you should put more weight on the coding side than interface/prices/etc.., at the end of the day, devs care about the results,
also you are very generous with the scores, id probably give them ~20-30 range so far.
I see where you're coming from and that's a fair point. All solutions on the market are pretty low (negligible tbh) price for the amount of value I get out of them. But I could easily imagine an expensive solution that just chugs code all day all night and builds a truly enterprise piece of software for like $500 or something. I wanted the value metric to account for that possibility, which I think will come on the market at some point soon-ish.
As far as UI stuff, these tools should make it easy to get stuff done as you said - but if the UI sucks, it's hard to do that, and for people new to building software that's potentially the most significant category. So I try to have some balance. There are plenty of categories surrounding the actual output and achieving results. Btw I am following this rubric (which I created) so the scores are based on specific criteria that I feel the software meets or does not meet: volobuilds.github.io/VoloScore/
i've been using it for at least 10 days! i used cursor before! i find windsurfing superior in the quality of the results
Nice - any tips for getting the most out of it?
@@VoloBuilds it seems to me windsurf has the project more under control! but maybe I'm wrong?
Back in September I was using Cursor. After about 600 lines including spaced lines, Cursor went off the rails and became unusable. My prompts were very explicit and put in disclaimers on not to change code...but cursor still did whatever it wanted.
Yeah this is a big problem with current AI coding tools - and I think it is related to the Apply models that take the LLM responses and map it to the actual code. I strongly urge people to make their files smaller (300 lines or less) to get optimal performance from these tools.
Have you done a comparison with Cline?
Not yet, but I have been hearing some good things so will add it to my list to review
So far I use Cursor I am a beginner and I do not want to change softwer so offten. I used agents in Replit and I had bad experience.
The only reason why I recommend using windsurf. It messes up less often. It doesn't insert stuff or create incorrect directories which break your program. Being new this was my issue. Windsurf has helped a lot with that.
Yeah Cursor has consistently been at the top of the stack for a while now and I'm really excited to try out their Agent solution - I wonder if they finally cracked it. Many other Agent-based solutions generally spin their wheels and make a lot of mistakes, which is why I was excited to see how well the Windsurf agents worked. Not perfect, but better than other agentic solutions so far.
The reason I still prefer Cursor is that I can screenshot and paste an image into chat/composer to quickly inform Claude what I want. I couldn't simply paste an image into Windsurf.
I've been using paid windsurf and cancelled my cursor subscription. I use the image I put often and it's definitely useful. But I prefer windsurf still.
So I swap for a quick input result and go back.
@@chriscotton4207same here! WS will do the photo upload soon though I hope.
If it is not frequent usage then you can use free claude website for it
@javier01 same here. It's interesting that they don't have a .cursorrules equivalent or an image function. But I'd assume this will be fixed soon enough. Cursor taught me a lot already. No hate. But ws just seems more consistent for sure.
Yes - from a practical perspective, this is a significant feature that definitely sets Cursor apart. Windsurf dev team did say they are working on it, so hopefully we'll see it soon!
as a beginner ,who can tell me choose which one
If price is not the major concern, cursor is a more mature model.
If you are new to coding, Windsurf has a slightly easier learning curve and does more thanks to the agentic capabilities. But if you've coded before and now switching to AI coding tools, I'd suggest Cursor since I find it to be stronger overall (currently).
Nocode builder, windsurf is easy to use esp with large projects, in cursor I seem to hit limit faster for free plan.
Context+ file structure+codes+dependencies= you're done.
Interesting; I feel like I code pretty frequently but I am not really hitting these limits. I did upgrade to $40/mo though and I don't use docs too frequently so perhaps it's the way I use it. The windsurf 1000 steps thing needs clarification; I have no idea how quickly it is reached or what happens when you reach it
Thanks
I found out that you have to be very specific znd the cascade will do wonders for you
Any specific tips that have helped you in that regard?
@VoloBuilds sometimes it tends to hallucinate once the thread gets long. Using the revert feature(on the prompt that messed things up) and ending the conversation has proven to be effective. In order to continue just start a new cascade convo and ask it to CD into your directory to get context. Then you can continue building
@@telegrphavenuetv Thanks for the suggestions!
Windsurf a like so much cuz the app read all my folders in the project
Yeah the automatic file identification is pretty great; I saw that Cursor also just added it in v0.43 - I'm curious if it's as good
what about pear ai ?
Will have to check it out - they just got so much negative press initially that I haven't bothered to look into it lol
Both very good but have some issues. Another objective Cursor vs Windsurf review: ruclips.net/video/duLRNDa-CR0/видео.html
many tiny advantages you mentioned about Windsurf are not the case when compared against Cursor 0.43
That's true - although I feel the new Cursor agent rollout has been a bit of a mess.. I shared my thoughts on that in this video: ruclips.net/video/ctn3mvDo22E/видео.html
@VoloBuilds GPT Pilot (Pythagora) is better.. Since last year it has already been integrated with most of the features mentioned in this video, in addition to being the pioneer in being 100% multi-agent based. You should seriously give it a chance.
Thanks for the suggestion, will check it out!
What cursor have already 9 months
Many of the features are shared yeah, but Windsurf did have the edge on the Autonomy front. Now Cursor released Agents so I have my hands full working on the next video :)
I use gpt o1-preview a bit during the design phase. Its answers are pretty good, but the details are still 100% wrong, all of the time.
At best, it throws in some decent ideas, wrapped in a pile of inaccurate and misleading ideas.
The rest of my workload has increased dramatically thanks to AI - other devs using cursor and whatever else to generate “almost done” patches that need to be reviewed.. fixed .. or just rewritten from scratch
The number of PRs per sprint has gone up, but productivity- if measured in terms of production quality releases - is way in the toilet
Yea I have noticed that the AI tools are kind of like a multiplier - so when you multiple low quality work it just makes things worse. Teams need to find ways to control quality - it's tempting to just push push push but then you'll end up in a mess. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I hope you provide an update on this, volo. Codeium's shady and unpredictable pricing (which got updated today) drags me away from windsurf and their pro plan is now up 5 dollars to 15. And the irony is that their pro plan is confusingly rate capped by not 1 but 2 different rate limits - and if you exceed them you'll need to buy credits for 10$ a bunch. It killed the IDE for me.
Yeah the pricing thing was a bit of a mess although I think they did the best they could given their situation - I imagine people were burning through credits - and they gave people unlimited credits to keep the momentum going. Hopefully they figure out what is sustainable for them. I think Cursor's idea of having a cap + unlimited slow queued requests is the right approach
You most certainly *_CAN_* load documents into Windsurf.
@@mybocks3 I'm not by my computer right now but can you load an image and have it read it.
I don't know about images, but in response to 2:43 you can give it documentation for context. I create a masterplan.md file, then create an instructions folder + instructions md file, then drag in my masterplan doc and tell Cascade to load it into instructions.md. From then on Cascade knows to reference the codebase _and_ the instructions.
I was referring to Documentation which Cursor has out of the box (docs for various standard libraries/frameworks). Windsurf doesn't currently have that - but you are right that there is a workaround to achieve a similar effect by adding the file to your repository and then referencing it - either through directly tagging, or having an index sort of file that tells it what it should reference. I believe this is still more friction than what Cursor enables, but thank you for sharing the workaround!
the reason to prefer windsurf over cursor is, that you can jump back into any stage of the code by undoing a chat you"ve sent to the AI
I actually struggled more with Undo/Redo than anything in Windsurf. I do like the Accept All / Reject All, but keep in mind it only works if you don't make any additional changes afterwards. The undo/redo stack is linear so it can't possibly "pull out" changes it made after you made additional ones. Cursor also has accept all/reject all in the composer, but I tend not to use it. Will be giving it a more thorough try with v0.43 though.
Cursor has this as well
I found the auto-complete completely distracting in Cursor. I had to turn it off. It was often suggesting incorret things especially in Rust and it would throw me off. Furthermore, I didn't like how Cursor messed up my VSCode installation.
Yeah I can definitely see that - and tbh it still happens to me sometimes too (more so when I was first starting to use it though). I sometimes toggle it off, but usually it's pretty good at predicting what I want to do
Windsurf was working very good but the last days it's doing everything wrong even the most basic programming tasks I don't know if it's Claude, but there is definitely something changed. It's not good anymore, I hope they do something about it.
Hmm strange - I haven't seen a change, but I've been mostly focused on trying out the new Cursor Agents this week
Try it again you will see there is definitely a big change and it's not good
WIND SURF!
🏄♂️
Windsurf, for now
It's definitely a solid option. I'm curious to see how the v0.43 Cursor agents stack up to Windsurf
The new cursor update removed long context chats.
What. Are you serious? I haven't tried it yet, but about to dig in. What is the limitation you are seeing?
@@VoloBuilds I just downloaded it myself a little ago so haven't tried it yet but I noticed it wasnt an option in chat and its not anywhere in the settings anymore.
@@FactsNoCare Thanks for the heads up - I'll have to try and see!
Very detailed video, human being! We are better than you at programming, though
Thanks, robot! I agree :) thank you for handling all of this work for us!
Please create a new video now Cursor Agent's out
I did! Check it out: ruclips.net/video/ctn3mvDo22E/видео.html
Cursor can do machine learning, but Winsurf always fails.
In what sense? What specific ML activity are you talking about?
This is what a review should be about not emotional click-baitey mess like Theo's pseudo-review.
Bro should just stick to article recitation like Primeagen.
Thank you!
The new cursor release is wonky.
Damn, that's unfortunate - I've heard the sentiment a few times. A bit anxious about upgrading :) And of course the hype guys are all saying "this is AGI" and "changes everything" (as always) 😅
You are definitely putting your mouth where your money is, but I find Windsurf to be the best
I'm not sponsored or invested in any coding tool, if that's what you're implying. There are definitely some areas where Windsurf is better (as discussed in the video) - but I'm curious what your favorite parts of it are
I have $220 maxed out Cursor account. Can’t go over at 5000 fast requests. I would give Cursor a 2.5 at this point and Windsurf and Aide a 1 for new idea teasers and starting competition.
Woah - what are you doing to blast through 5000 fast requests?
@ automating things in my restaurant with an app and a side-project idea I had for years. But yeah, I know😭
New update cursor sucks a lott also the @codebase is gone
Oh no :( About to try it out now, we'll see how it goes. The changelog looked really impressive but I've seen mixed reviews
It's vscode, don't thank me
Or is it? :) This is what VS code AI is actually like: ruclips.net/video/TCQloeJsMPE/видео.html
@VoloBuilds there's a plugin marketplace in vscode ;)
@@VoloBuilds vscode has an extension marketplace with free extensions with all the functionality you could need, also there are things like aider
Cursor is useless!
You forget to mention that cursor is 20$, windsurf 10$
There's literally a whole section in the video called Value during which I talk about the price.
Watch the video, the last section is about the price.