Windsurf alternatives, now that Windsurf is Devin Desktop

The best overall Windsurf alternative is Cursor, the closest match as a desktop AI editor with Tab completion, an agent, a CLI and cloud agents, with a free Hobby plan and paid plans. The best free alternative is Google Antigravity, whose free Individual plan includes unlimited Tab completions, and the best for open source is Zed (GPL-3.0), or Cline if you want to stay in VS Code. We compared 5 options on free tier, license, model choice, editor reach, agent skills and MCP; facts checked on 2026-10-01.

What happened to Windsurf

Windsurf still exists under a new name. Cognition renamed it Devin Desktop on 2026-06-02, windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai/desktop, and the launch post says plans, pricing and extensions stayed the same. The default agent changed from Cascade to Devin Local, and project skills now prefer .devin/skills, with .windsurf/skills kept as a legacy folder. The Free plan includes unlimited Tab completions and inline edits, and the paid Pro plan adds Devin Cloud access, read on devin.ai/pricing on 2026-10-01. If you like the editor and only the name changed, there is no reason to move: see Windsurf on CookiesForAI, and Devin for Cognition's cloud agent. The tools below are for people who want a different maker, an open source editor, or published usage limits, which Windsurf's pricing page does not give.

Cursor: the closest all-in-one AI editor

Cursor is an AI code editor by Anysphere, for developers who want what Windsurf offers, a desktop editor built around an agent and Tab completion, from a different maker. Like Windsurf, it offers models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others next to its own Composer models, and it can hand work to cloud agents that run in isolated virtual machines. Its strength is reach: the same agent runs in the editor on macOS, Windows and Linux, a CLI called agent, cloud agents started from Slack, GitHub, Linear or iOS, and an API. Its limit is cost: Cursor's own docs say daily agent users typically spend well beyond the Pro plan's included usage, read on 2026-10-01. The free Hobby plan has limited Agent requests. Cursor reads skills from .agents/skills and .cursor/skills, and also .claude/skills, and MCP servers from .cursor/mcp.json. Details: Cursor on CookiesForAI.

Google Antigravity: best free AI editor

Google Antigravity is Google's agentic development platform, for people who want a capable AI editor without paying. It differs from Windsurf in shape: Antigravity 2.0 is a desktop command center for running several agents in parallel, Antigravity IDE is the standalone editor, and a CLI and extensions for VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Zed and Xcode come with it. Its strength is the free plan: the Individual plan includes Gemini Flash and Pro models, some Claude and open models, and unlimited Tab completions and Command requests, read on 2026-10-01. Its limit is model control: Antigravity does not support your own API key or a custom endpoint, and the free plan has weekly rate limits. When moving MCP servers from Windsurf, note that remote servers in Antigravity's mcp_config.json use serverUrl, not url. Antigravity reads project skills from .agents/skills, one of the folders Windsurf also reads. Details: Google Antigravity on CookiesForAI.

Zed: best open source editor

Zed is an open source code editor by Zed Industries, written in Rust, for developers who want a fast native editor and the choice of any model or agent. Unlike Windsurf, its code is public under GPL-3.0-or-later, with 91,154 GitHub stars on 2026-10-01. Its strength is freedom: the free Personal plan includes an allowance of edit predictions and unlimited use of your own API keys, existing ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot subscriptions, or local models through Ollama, and external agents such as Claude, Codex and Gemini CLI run in its agent panel over the Agent Client Protocol. The paid Pro plan adds unlimited predictions and hosted model tokens. Its limit is the move itself: Zed is not built on VS Code, so VS Code extensions do not carry over, and its Business plan lists SSO, SAML and SCIM as planned but not available. Zed reads skills from .agents/skills since v1.4.2 (2026-05-27). Details: Zed on CookiesForAI.

GitHub Copilot: keep the editor you have

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant by GitHub, for people who used Windsurf as a plugin, or whose team works on GitHub, and want AI in the editor they already run. Windsurf's plugins cover JetBrains, VS Code, Visual Studio, Vim and Neovim; Copilot runs in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Neovim, Xcode, Eclipse and Zed, along with a CLI, a desktop app and github.com. Its strength is breadth on a free entry: Copilot Free has limited chat, agent use and inline suggestions, and the paid plans add a cloud agent that works on a branch and opens a pull request, read on 2026-10-01. Its limit is metering: paid plans count agent work in GitHub AI Credits and bill each credit beyond the included amount, so heavy use costs more, and the cloud agent works only on GitHub. Copilot reads skills from .github/skills, .claude/skills and .agents/skills. Details: GitHub Copilot on CookiesForAI.

Cline: open source agent inside VS Code

Cline is an open source coding agent by Cline Bot Inc., for developers who would rather run an agent as an extension in VS Code than adopt a new AI editor. It runs in VS Code and its forks, including Cursor, VSCodium, Antigravity and Windsurf itself, plus JetBrains, a CLI and a desktop app. Its strength is control: Plan mode works out a change without touching files, Act mode carries it out, checkpoints roll code back, and you choose the model, from Anthropic, OpenAI or Gemini keys to local models through Ollama or LM Studio. Cline had 69,653 GitHub stars on 2026-10-01 under Apache-2.0, and its pricing page says it is free for individual developers. Its limit is cost and setup: you pay each model provider yourself or buy credits, and Cline's skills docs list .cline/skills and .claude/skills but not .agents/skills, so Windsurf skills need copying. Details: Cline on CookiesForAI.

How we chose

We listed tools that cover what people used Windsurf for: an editor with an agent, completions, or an AI plugin for an existing editor. We read each maker's pricing page, docs and, for open source tools, GitHub repository on 2026-10-01, and Windsurf's own pricing and rename post the same day. The criteria were price of entry, license, model choice, editors covered, agent skills and MCP. We did not test completion quality or agent results. Kilo Code, an MIT-licensed extension with 500+ models through its gateway, is a fair alternative to Cline. Roo Code is not listed: it was shut down on 2026-05-15.

How to choose

• If you want the same kind of product from another maker, choose Cursor.
• If you want to pay nothing and can live with Google's models and weekly limits, choose Google Antigravity.
• If you want open source code or a native editor that takes any agent, choose Zed.
• If you used Windsurf as a plugin in JetBrains, Visual Studio or Neovim, choose GitHub Copilot.
• If you want to stay in VS Code with your own model keys, choose Cline.