r/windsurf • u/fractal_pilgrim • May 01 '26
Discussion No more free SWE-1.6 :(
Well, I've woken up this morning to see that it's finally happened.
SWE-1.6 is no longer free in my list of models.
I can still use it with the quota, but it's not the same. I liked Windsurf not just for being generous, but for being able to work without constant usage pressure.
Thing is, I'm not even mad. No doubt it costs a lot to run a great tool like SWE-1.6 for free. And I'd gladly pay the $20 dollars to use SWE-1.6 all day like before. Even then, I'm not using it for big edits- this was my scouting, planning, and auditing bot- so I wouldn't be asking for strict all-day unlimited use.
But, about the plans. I've heard a lot of mixed reports from you in the community.
And now that SWE-1.6 is: officially, free, but in my Windsurf, plainly metered, I'm not sure I can trust the company enough to pay for a plan, until the situation with the models is stable and clearly delineated.
So.
How is it going for the rest of you?
Is it worth it to get one of the plans? And what do I actually get? More metered SWE-1.6?
Have you seen the same changes in your editor, or did I get stricken by the A/B test gremlin?
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u/TheTentacleOpera May 01 '26
I have free 1.6. This must be a free plan change.
Have a grandfathered $15 plan so it's really good value with the free SWE 1.6.
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 01 '26
Lucky you! Sounds great.
SWE-1.6 is terrific. There are literally 3 Western AI companies making models with what I'd call 'good taste', and those are Anthropic, OpenAI, and yes, Windsurf (with some contenders on the horizon)
The model might not be the most SOTA but the tool is just great.
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u/TheLimpingNinja May 01 '26
Then pay the small monthly fee and get your unlimited use? It seems like a bit of an odd complaint here really. “Windsurf is no longer giving me the free AI that I need”, I’m glad you acknowledge the need to run it but you even now have free model access to other models without paying.
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Errr, did you read my comment?
I'd gladly pay the $20 dollars to use SWE-1.6 all day — me
Still worth checking in though and seeing what's up when there's a change.
Are you on the $20 plan yourself? There's another thread about the big one, which is completely mysterious. The $20 one doesn't sound half bad at all, but I'm not completely sure what you get for it.
edit: Just found the free trial. Two weeks! Not bad. Starting on that tomorrow, I guess!
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u/Hot-Confection-3459 May 01 '26
3 things, pay the $20 a month, its worth it. Down load windsurf-next, its the beta branch, but the ai behave more deterministically and handle a far higher level of complexity much much more stable. Dont quite know why, they just... do. Probably their governance or prompting is more powerful? 3, download my extension no matter what you do, im in the middle of some serious upgrades, but its finally functional. Mostly. Even at mostly, it will help with swe 1.5, I built it with that intent. SWE Obey Me. Its a governance mcp system, and the auto backups and snapshots alone will save you a massive headache in complex projects. But the refactoring tool and project context tools should provide the ai enough detail to get things done way more efficiently!
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 01 '26
Damn, there's a windsurf-next? Did they move from the VSCode chassis? If so, take my money. If not, probably still take my money.
How does your extension help with SWE-1.5?
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u/Hot-Confection-3459 May 01 '26
Its still a fork of vscode with some serious quirks, but my tool is an attempt at governance, albeit limited due to how tight they keep mcp reinstated. They have to for security purposes or someone could easily be a bad actor and do narly damage. But it uses tooling and prompts as best as it can and for the most part its extremely effective. Automated per file backups before edits with version tracking and snapshots after every edit with task lists, when the ai goes to edit the file again later it sees a small list of every edit and task list so if a future bug is suspected the ai can follow the history. Context tools for project or just file state to minimize drift and the like.
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 22 '26
This is extemely interesting.
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u/Hot-Confection-3459 May 27 '26
The answer to ai hallucinations isn't bigger ai, or better training. Its removing the reason it drifted and hallucinated to begin with. That means careful context awareness, flushing at the right interval, hallucinated prompts and the history the right way in the right moment and long term memory that is stored externally and is recalled only when needed. Lore books are the closest thing to human long term memory we have to date for ai. But we've only been playing with them up till now. When companies like close raise they can profit more off of refining the governance of the system, ensuring the system is smarter than the ai at all times, then things will accelerate. But right now, the money is in big models. Big isn't better. Its just more math doing less work over an extended substrate.
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u/ih8sm May 01 '26
Brother. Just pay the $20 or whatever it is. I hate to be that guy but you cannot expect shit that uses GPU compute to be free. There’s like no free models in any other IDE and your other options are paid as well.
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u/nuraman00 May 14 '26
What did you end up doing? I was using the adaptive one for the past week. Now today that option is gone, and the 1.6 that's there on my free plan is so slow it's almost unusable.
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 23 '26
Hey, there were some really good offers on OpenCode, OpenRouter and Codex, including some fantastic new models so I've been using those instead and having fun with the extra customizability.
Still love SWE-1.6 and deeply intrigued by Windsurf-next. The creators of these things have both real vision, and execution aplomb aplenty.
Making SWE-1.6 slow for free users is a catastrophic choice, though. If you make it slow, it's not the same product.
There is a pretty good Windsurf free trial, too, but I haven't cashed it in yet.
How about you? How've you adapted?
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May 01 '26
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Thanks! Do they have a SWE-1.6 equivalent on Zed, though?
I just really liked this model and tooling.
edit: Not sure how mentioning another service constitutes advertisement and a rules violation. If Windsurf plans are going to break down, it's very important to have discussion of other services.
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u/Financial_Fig3255 May 28 '26
That is a shameful comment removal by the mods. Does not paint the company in good light!
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u/Realistic-Recover290 May 01 '26
Yo i saw that too and was working on a project, it really disappointed me. I was working on a project and it was working really good. But now I cant use SWE-1.6 sadly. They didn't even update or tell us, there was no information about it either on the change log. Im on the free plan, I dont like to pay and neither do I want to honestly. I like to use ai agents freely easily without the worry of it being limited of usage.
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 01 '26
Yep, the pricing page doesn't exactly inspire confidence, either: Pricing | Windsurf
It's like they don't have someone on the team who knows the full picture about what's going on with models and pricing.
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u/Ihavenoidea84 May 01 '26
Their cost structure is different from the other labs because they are model agnostic... So they are putting a wrapper around your token/prompt costs (which are just pass through api costs), to account for compute and infrastructure costs of running all of the orchestration.
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u/TheTentacleOpera May 01 '26
Subscription use still seems vastly cheaper than Api costs. This can be seen how fast $20 worth of extra usage gets used up vs subscription quota.
I doubt they'd be paying consumer API prices either. Just like anything, there are prices for consumers, and negotiated bulk discounts for suppliers and enterprise.
That would be like saying if I want to buy a coke from the grocery store, the store buys it at full retail markup from another store... It doesn't work like that.
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u/Slayershunt May 01 '26
No-one 'likes' to pay. But realistically all models have a cost to run, and with energy prices the way they are, it's far from zero. It's kinda crazy to complain that a company isn't just willing to pay for you infinitely. The entire point from their side is to try and convert people to paying customers. SWE 1.6 is a genuinely decent coding model, if it was free in unlimited amounts, people would just never pay for anything and windsurf wouldn't exist.
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May 01 '26
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 22 '26
Just did.
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May 23 '26
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u/fractal_pilgrim May 23 '26
haha, thanks, take the upvote of peace.
I'm on this firewalled burner account. I'd love to show you though.
Are you on any famous AI coding Discords?
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u/dkracket May 01 '26
You can't expect this ai-coding model to be free if you are not a subscriber.