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This Windsurf review starts with a name change. On June 2, 2026, Cognition, the company behind the Devin coding agent, renamed the Windsurf editor Devin Desktop through an automatic update. Your plan, settings and extensions carried over, and windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai.
The editor underneath is the same; its agent, however, is not. Cognition retired Cascade, the agent that made Windsurf known, on July 1 and replaced it with Devin Local. Meanwhile, Pro costs $20 a month on daily and weekly quotas, the same headline price as Cursor Pro.
Windsurf Review: Is It Worth It in 2026?
For developers who want one place to run many agents, possibly. Devin Desktop’s Agent Command Center manages local and cloud agents in one view. It also runs third-party agents such as Codex and Claude’s agent through an open protocol.
For most others, Cursor or GitHub Copilot is the safer pick today. Devin Desktop has no entry on independent agent benchmarks, its local agent is new, and Windsurf’s 2025 security record was slow to resolve. Our Cursor review covers the closest rival.
From Windsurf to Devin Desktop
Originally, Windsurf began as Codeium’s editor. In July 2025, after Google hired its chief executive in a $2.4 billion licensing deal, Cognition agreed to buy the rest of Windsurf, CNBC reported. Later, in March 2026, Windsurf replaced monthly credits with daily and weekly quotas and raised Pro from $15 to $20, pricing guides report. Our Windsurf vs Tabnine comparison also weighs a multi-agent editor against a private assistant.
Then came the June rename. Cognition’s announcement calls Devin Desktop a full IDE with an agent manager built in, backward-compatible with Windsurf and VS Code. The Windsurf plugin for JetBrains IDEs, however, keeps its old name, guides report.
What Devin Desktop Costs
Cognition’s documentation lists four self-serve plans, read on October 2, 2026, plus Enterprise. On paid plans, usage beyond the quota then draws on paid on-demand credits.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | A light quota for trying the agent |
| Pro | $20/mo | Daily and weekly quota across Desktop, CLI and cloud sessions |
| Max | $200/mo | A much larger weekly quota, with no daily cap |
| Teams | $40 per full seat; $80/mo minimum | Pro-equivalent quota per full seat; admin tools |
| Enterprise | Custom | SSO, dedicated deployments; never trained on |
Flex members on Teams, meanwhile, get no quota of their own and no Desktop access; they draw on a shared pool. For a yearly view against other tools, see our breakdown of AI tool costs, or our GitHub Copilot review for a cheaper seat.
What Devin Desktop Does
First, the default view is the Agent Command Center, a Kanban board of local and cloud agent sessions. In addition, Spaces group sessions, pull requests, files and context so agents can share them. The editor itself keeps extensions, keybindings and language servers.
Cognition says it rewrote Devin Local, the new local agent, in Rust, and that it uses up to 30% fewer tokens than Cascade. Moreover, the Agent Client Protocol lets Codex, Claude’s agent, OpenCode and in-house agents run inside the same view.
Which Models It Runs
Paid plans, for their part, include frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, pricing guides report, alongside Cognition’s own SWE-series models. Because Devin Desktop also hosts other companies’ agents, you can run, for example, Codex inside it as well.
However, Cognition does not publish a model list per plan on the pages we read. Check the model menu before you rely on a specific one.
What Independent Evaluations Show
For this Windsurf review, we found no entry for Windsurf or Devin Desktop on Artificial Analysis’s Coding Agent Index. By contrast, Cursor, Claude Code and Codex all have one, as our list of the best AI for coding shows.
⚠️ Without an outside score, our Output Quality and Accuracy ratings stay conservative. Cognition’s own security page also warns that its agent can hallucinate, introduce bugs or suggest insecure code, so review every diff. Our guide to checking AI output applies to code, too.
Your Code and Training
Cognition’s documentation says it stops using your data for training once you opt out, and zero data retention then turns on with its model providers. By contrast, Cognition says it never trains on Enterprise data.
Windsurf’s older security page made zero data retention the default for team and enterprise plans and opt-in for individuals. ⚠️ So on Free, Pro or Max, opt out before you open private code. Also check the setting on your account rather than assuming the rename changed it.
Security Record
In August 2025, researcher Johann Rehberger of Embrace The Red published a serious finding. Hidden instructions in project files could make Cascade send secrets such as .env contents to an outside server. He had reported the issues in May 2025 and published them after receiving no fix timeline.
In October 2025, HiddenLayer also disclosed CVE-2025-62353, a path-traversal flaw rated 9.8 out of 10 that affected Windsurf 1.12.12 and older. Devin Local has since replaced Cascade; however, we found no independent audit of Devin Local yet. Therefore, keep the editor updated and limit which tools run without approval.
Who Runs It
Cognition AI, founded in 2023, makes the Devin agent. After buying Windsurf, investors valued it at $10 billion in September 2025 and at $26 billion by May 2026, according to Wikipedia’s account. Windsurf had about $82 million in annual recurring revenue at the time of the deal, Amplifying reports.
Windsurf vs Cursor and GitHub Copilot
For comparison, Cursor Pro also costs $20 and has a public agent score, 62 for its Composer 2.5 on the May index. GitHub Copilot Pro, on the other hand, costs $10 and works inside the editors you already use. Our list of Cursor alternatives compares the wider field.
Still, Devin Desktop’s distinct strength is orchestration: one board for local, cloud and third-party agents. If that is what you need, it is worth a trial. Otherwise, our guides to Claude for coding and ChatGPT for coding cover strong terminal agents.
Who Should Use Windsurf
Overall, Devin Desktop suits developers and teams that already use Devin’s cloud agent, or that run several agents and want them on one board. Existing Windsurf users, moreover, keep their plans and settings. Our list of Windsurf alternatives also ranks eight options by independent scores.
By contrast, it suits people who want proven benchmark results less, along with anyone handling sensitive code without checking the training setting first. Beginners can compare free options in our list of the best AI for coding beginners.
How We Research
This Windsurf review takes the rename from Cognition’s Devin Desktop announcement, and plans and data rules from Cognition’s documentation, read on October 2, 2026. Pricing guides, CNBC, Wikipedia and Amplifying fill gaps, marked where used.
Security findings come from Embrace The Red’s disclosures and HiddenLayer’s CVE. We found no independent quality evaluation, so two criteria rest on the absence of evidence. Our about page explains the criteria, and our list of the best AI tools for developers covers API pricing.
Windsurf Review FAQ
Cognition renamed it Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026, through an automatic update that kept plans and settings. Devin Local then replaced the Cascade agent on July 1.
Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf, has a free plan and Pro at $20 a month. Max costs $200 and Teams $40 per full seat, all on daily and weekly quotas.
Both cost $20 for Pro. Cursor has a public agent benchmark score and a longer track record; Devin Desktop adds a board for managing local, cloud and third-party agents.
Cognition says it stops training on your data once you opt out, and it never trains on Enterprise data. On personal plans, opt out before you open private code.
Cognition AI, the maker of the Devin agent, which agreed to buy Windsurf in July 2025.
Windsurf (Devin Desktop)
A capable editor in transition
Devin Desktop keeps Windsurf’s editor and adds a board for running local, cloud and third-party agents, from $20 a month. Against that, its agent is new and it has no independent benchmark entry. Personal plans also need a training opt-out, and Windsurf’s 2025 security disclosures were slow to resolve.
The Verdict
Windsurf lives on as Devin Desktop, a capable editor that now centers on managing many agents at once. For teams already invested in Devin, that is a real advantage.
The rest of this Windsurf review holds the score at 3.1. The product is mid-transition, has no independent benchmark, and needs a training opt-out on personal plans. Try the free plan, and compare it with Cursor before you commit.