Cursor vs Windsurf (Codeium): Feature & Price Guide

Cursor vs Windsurf (Codeium): Feature & Price Guide

November 14, 2025

TL;DR: Cursor provides advanced AI-assisted refactoring for web applications under 15,000 lines, though independent reviews indicate performance degrades on large codebases exceeding 400,000 files. Moderate learning curve with most users achieving proficiency in several hours. Pricing: $20/month individual. Windsurf (formerly Codeium) offers $15/month individual pricing, superior deployment flexibility with SOC 2 Type 2 compliance and self-hosting, and deep multi-file AI-powered refactoring comparable to Cursor. Both represent generational shifts from autocomplete to contextual understanding and autonomous workflows, though they approach this evolution through different architectural philosophies.

Quick Snapshot of the Two Tools

Cursor is a fork of VS Code functioning as an AI-centric editor. Cursor 2.0 introduced Composer, the company's first proprietary coding model, alongside a multi-agent interface allowing developers to orchestrate up to eight AI agents working simultaneously on different tasks. According to GeeksforGeeks analysis, Cursor stands out for speed, precision, and robust features, making it ideal for developers wanting fine-grained control over their coding environment.

Codeium launched the Windsurf Editor in November 2024, positioning it as "the first agentic IDE" combining human and machine capabilities. Full company rebranding from Codeium to Windsurf was completed in April 2025. While UI Bakery's comparisons highlight Cursor as a drop-in assistant for existing IDEs, Windsurf functions as a standalone AI-powered IDE.

A developer comparison noted that Windsurf excels in initial experience, specifically praising how "Windsurf lets you verify/check the code suggestion right in the main window that makes for a better experience." This developer observed superior contextual awareness, noting "Windsurf found the file in the first try, Cursor needed additional prodding and keywords."

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Day-to-Day Coding Experience

Cursor provides an AI-native development environment through VS Code fork architecture. According to ELEKS research, Cursor offers three primary interaction modes: Chat (Cmd/Ctrl + L), Inline Composer/Agent (Cmd/Ctrl + K) for direct code generation, and Composer for multi-file project structure generation. The platform supports frontier models including GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and Claude Opus 4.1.

Codeium/Windsurf integrates into existing IDEs (VS Code, JetBrains, Vim/Neovim) as an extension rather than requiring IDE replacement. Skywork AI's analysis documents multiple assistance modalities: Autocomplete, Chat, Command (natural language to code edits), plus deeper context features like Cascade.

Critical Finding: The Learning Investment Reality

HackerNews discussions revealed that positive speedup occurs for developers with more than 50 hours of Cursor experience, suggesting a high skill ceiling while initial experiences show negative productivity impacts. The Pragmatic Engineer's controlled study analysis found developers using AI tools take 19% longer than without on average.

Additionally, CodeZero's research documented that a single interruption can cost a developer more than 20 minutes to regain deep focus, with context switching potentially costing over $100 per developer daily.

Winner: Codeium/Windsurf for teams prioritizing immediate productivity, existing IDE preservation, and enterprise compliance. Cursor may provide superior long-term value for teams working primarily on web applications (React, Node.js, Python Django) with codebases under 15,000 lines willing to invest 50+ hours in learning curves and IDE migration.

Context and Scale

Cursor implements automatic codebase indexing with Merkle tree-based architecture for efficient re-indexing. According to official documentation, the platform computes embeddings for each file and indexes incrementally, enabling multi-root workspace support for simultaneous indexing of multiple codebases.

Engineer's Codex details Cursor's implementation: files are chunked locally into semantically meaningful pieces, with Merkle trees of hashes computed for all valid files, and embeddings stored in cache indexed by chunk hash.

Performance Limitations: Augment Code's analysis documents that Cursor can freeze on large codebases requiring alternatives for codebases exceeding 400,000 files. Sentisight's testing found Cursor performed well on React applications with 15,000 lines, showing no performance issues at that scale.

Codeium/Windsurf context capabilities include Cascade for multi-file assistance and understanding dependencies, though detailed technical documentation regarding context window specifications, exact token limits, and large-scale codebase performance characteristics has not been comprehensively published.

Winner: Cursor for web applications (React, Node.js, Python Django) with codebases under 15,000 lines where full indexing provides comprehensive context awareness. Performance degrades significantly for larger enterprise codebases exceeding 15,000 lines, offering minimal value for mixed-language codebases (C++, Rust).

Refactoring and Autocomplete Features

Cursor's Refactoring Capabilities: ELEKS research documents sophisticated refactoring through Composer for building entire project structures and Chat interface for refactoring guidance with model flexibility across OpenAI and Anthropic backends.

Codeium/Windsurf Refactoring: Windsurf's Flow state enables iterative multi-file edits, with capabilities for understanding architectural patterns and propagating changes across dependencies. The platform provides context-aware suggestions maintaining consistency with existing codebase patterns.

Autocomplete Performance: Both platforms provide inline code completion. Sentisight's analysis notes Cursor achieved 100% test pass rate on React 15K LOC applications, while Codeium demonstrated strong performance across multiple language contexts.

Winner: Tie. Cursor excels for web applications under 15,000 lines with sophisticated Composer-based refactoring. Codeium/Windsurf provides comparable capabilities with better performance scaling for larger codebases and mixed-language environments.

Pricing Comparison

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According to the official Cursor Forum, Cursor's free tier provides 500 free requests per month (increased from 200), 2,000 tab completions, and 50 slow premium requests monthly.

Critical Cost Discovery: Forum discussions reveal that GPT-4.5 consumes $2 per request in Cursor Pro's $20 credit pool, meaning monthly allowance can be exhausted in as few as 10 requests if exclusively using that model.

Enterprise Pricing: Based on Skywork.ai analysis, Cursor Enterprise costs approximately $40/user/month while official Windsurf pricing shows $30/user/month for Teams tier, representing a $10 monthly advantage (though adding SSO increases Windsurf cost to $40/user/month parity).

Value Assessment: Windsurf provides $5/month cost advantage for Pro tier ($15/month vs. Cursor's $20/month) and generous free individual tier with 25 monthly prompt credits. Cursor offers greater pricing transparency with explicitly documented limits enabling precise budget planning for enterprise deployments.

Enterprise Readiness: Security, Deployment and Compliance

Compliance Certifications: Codeium has achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, officially announced by co-founder Varun Mohan: "Codeium is SOC 2 Type 2 Compliant. While competitors don't even have SOC 2 Type 1 certifications and are SaaS only, Codeium has an air-gapped self-hosted offering."

Cursor's SOC 2 certification status could not be verified through official documentation. The Cursor Enterprise Documentation and Privacy Policy do not explicitly reference SOC 2 certification.

Deployment Options: Codeium offers air-gapped self-hosted offering with deployment options including cloud/SaaS, self-hosted, on-premise, and air-gapped environments. VMware's brief confirms deployment securely within your tenant on private infrastructure.

Cursor operates as a cloud-based service with no documented self-hosted, on-premise, or air-gapped deployment options in official documentation.

Enterprise Security Features: Cursor provides robust centralized governance through Single Sign-On (SSO), SCIM provisioning, comprehensive audit logs tracking authentication, user management, and administrative actions (Enterprise tier only), and AI Code Tracking API for monitoring code generation (Enterprise tier). Additionally, Cursor offers model access restrictions, personal usage limits with per-user thresholds, and pooled team usage with admin-only controls.

Winner: Codeium for organizations with data sovereignty requirements, regulatory constraints, or strict IP protection policies due to verified SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, air-gapped deployment, and private infrastructure integration.

Verdict by Use Case

Solo developer wanting minimal setup inside an existing IDE: Codeium/Windsurf. Offers unlimited free tier autocomplete, maintains existing IDE preferences (JetBrains, Vim/Neovim, VS Code), and requires no learning curve for basic functionality.

Team tackling huge monorepos and heavy refactors: Cursor excels within limits, Codeium offers flexible alternatives. Cursor provides superior refactoring for codebases under 15,000 lines but can freeze on large codebases exceeding 400,000 files. Codeium/Windsurf maintains performance across larger repositories.

Security-sensitive enterprise needing on-prem deployment: Codeium/Windsurf or Augment Code. Codeium/Windsurf offers verified SOC 2 Type 2 compliance and supports various deployment configurations, including self-hosted options. Augment Code provides additional security leadership with ISO/IEC 42001 certification (first in market), SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, customer-managed encryption keys, and air-gapped deployment capabilities.

Web development teams willing to invest in AI-native workflows: Cursor. Provides sophisticated multi-agent orchestration and deep VS Code integration through Composer feature for multi-file project structure generation, though has $20/month individual pricing and users typically become proficient with moderate initial training.

Where Augment Code Fills the Gaps

Both Cursor and Codeium reveal significant limitations for enterprise development teams: Cursor's performance degrades on large codebases (exceeding 15,000 lines) while lacking independently verified enterprise security certifications, and Codeium provides limited refactoring capabilities in certain complex scenarios.

Augment Code addresses these enterprise gaps directly through independently verified security leadership: holding ISO/IEC 42001 certification (the first AI coding assistant to achieve this) and SOC 2 Type II compliance. The platform's 200,000-token context engine processes up to 500,000 files, providing 3x the capacity of GitHub Copilot and a documented 12.5x advantage in context processing capacity over Cursor.

Enterprise-specific advantages include customer-managed encryption keys (Augment Code's unique differentiator providing direct customer control over encryption infrastructure), air-gapped deployment with complete network isolation, and multi-repository coordination through autonomous agent architecture.

Quantified performance improvements include 40% reduction in hallucinations, 35-50% reduction in manual refactoring effort across large codebases, and 40% false positive reduction in CI/CD code review processes.

For engineering teams requiring enterprise-grade security with independently verified certifications, processing capabilities that scale beyond 15,000-line codebases, deployment flexibility for regulated industries, and customer-managed encryption keys, Augment Code provides the comprehensive solution that addresses critical gaps neither Cursor nor Codeium fully delivers.

Try Augment Code (www.augmentcode.com): the first AI coding assistant to achieve ISO/IEC 42001 certification with SOC 2 Type II compliance, 200,000-token context engine processing up to 500,000 files, customer-managed encryption keys, and air-gapped deployment options for regulated enterprises.

AI Coding Tool Comparisons:

Context and Scale:

Enterprise Security and Compliance:

Molisha Shah

Molisha Shah

GTM and Customer Champion


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