Disclosure: DevTools Review currently has no confirmed affiliate or commission relationship with Windsurf/Devin Desktop — we don't earn anything if you click through. This review is based on six months of hands-on daily use.
According to DevTools Review's hands-on testing, Windsurf — rebranded to Devin Desktop on 2 June 2026, after Cognition (maker of the Devin agent) acquired it — is the most exciting and most frustrating AI editor we've used. Rating: 3.5/5. It's the same editor, same plans, just a new name; windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai. We're still calling it Windsurf here since that's what most people search for.
The agent that impressed us
Cascade is the reason to use this editor. We pointed it at a FastAPI project and asked for comprehensive Pydantic v2 input validation across every POST/PUT endpoint, with consistent error responses. It found all 11 relevant endpoints across 4 router files, inferred field types from our existing database models, and matched our error-response format — in about two minutes. 9 of 11 endpoints were perfect on the first pass; two had minor type issues (one field that should've been required, one str that needed to be EmailStr). That's a strong hit rate for a single prompt.
It's just as good at structural understanding, not just generation. Asked what state-management patterns our React app used and whether they were applied consistently, it correctly identified Zustand for global state and React Query for server state — then flagged two components quietly bypassing React Query by caching API responses in local useState. That's the kind of catch that matters in a code review.
Where it struggles
Cascade's biggest weakness is recovery. When it goes off track mid-task, there's no clean way to say "steps 1-3 were right, redo step 4" — correcting it often re-runs the whole thing, redoing already-good work. We learned to keep Cascade sessions small and focused, which blunts its biggest advantage.
The plain autocomplete — the ghost text as you type — is also noticeably behind Cursor and Copilot: about 100-200ms slower to appear, and maybe 55-60% of suggestions directly usable versus 70-75% for the competition. Windsurf has clearly put its engineering effort into Cascade rather than line-by-line completion, and it shows.
Editor polish has gaps too: we hit ESLint config conflicts, GitLens rendering artifacts, and AI-shortcut keybinding clashes in the first week. Nothing unfixable, but friction you don't get in VS Code or Cursor.
Pricing (corrected)
Windsurf/Devin Desktop's current pricing (verified 2026-08-13, unchanged since the June rebrand): Free — a genuinely generous quota, we ran two weeks of real work on it before hitting limits — Pro at $20/month, a new Max tier at $200/month for heavy usage, and Teams at $40/user/month on top of a base fee. Full breakdown: our Windsurf pricing guide.
The bottom line
Cascade and Flows are a genuine leap in what an AI editor can do — describing a complex, multi-step task and watching an agent plan and execute it across a real codebase isn't a parlor trick, it's a time-saver on migrations, refactors, and scaffolding. But the rough edges (recovery, autocomplete, polish) are real too. If you can tolerate friction for cutting-edge agentic capability, it earns a place in your toolbox. If you want the most polished experience, that's still Cursor.
Full review, pros/cons, and head-to-head comparisons against Cursor, Copilot, and Claude Code: https://devtoolsreview.com/reviews/windsurf-review/
Top comments (0)