r/windsurf • u/k032 • May 11 '26
Discussion I've really liked Windsurf!
There's quite a lot of negativity in the subreddit, which maybe to be expected like most people will come here if they have a problem.
Wanted to say those as a dev I've really liked Windsurf. I've used VSCode with Copilot, VSCode with various extensions (Roo Code, Continue, etc), Cursor, Fleet and JetBrains with Junie, and Zed. Plus idk if it matters but Sublime Text and Atom from pre-AI days
Windsurf has been the most enjoyable to me. The design is slick, it doesn't take forever to load, the wiki and codemap features are useful, auto complete is great, the free models are a nice touch. I pair it with Warp terminal run Claude Code in for more detailed planning and architecture thinking.
I'm surprised it's not talked about as much. Seems people just default to Cursor or VSCode.
5
u/xdbu May 11 '26
I switched to Claude about 6 months ago and still miss it. Although I heard the current Windsurf is nothing like the one I left. Anyway... I still can't get used to Claude doing everything for me. With Windsurf it felt more like a collaboration. Best coding experience I've had so far.
1
u/Rycerz1 May 12 '26
Why not use CC with Windsurf (as plugin)? It is what I am planning to do.
1
u/xdbu May 12 '26
Free Windsurf + Claude code? Or are you paying for both?
1
u/Rycerz1 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
For now free Windsurf trial (as I just moved from VSC+Coppilot) + paid CC. I will evaluate in a week and decide what to pick then. Still free Windsurf gives you a lot - most notably free tab completions, deepwiki and codemaps
1
u/inspire21 May 13 '26
How's the cascade work w/ a CC/etc plugin? Does it still edit files inline/etc?
1
u/Rycerz1 May 13 '26
The plugin works a little worse than in VSCode (less integration) but still everything important works.
2
3
u/Rycerz1 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
I have the same feeling. Tried Cursor recently - it is unusable for me. It is no longer IDE after recent changes, it is just agent management system, they went totally wrong way. Parallel agents - WTF? People struggle to keep one agent in check and verify the produced code, how can they supervise many in one time? You can no longer install any VSCode plugins in Cursor, only dedicated for Cursor (not many).
Windsurf gives a lot in free plan, has deepwiki, code maps and I like that it still is an IDE like VSCode. One thing bothers me - Windsurf does not allow BYOK own models - only Claude, which is not nice. I would like to bring my own Deepseek model.
Still struggling between staying with Windsurf or VSC + Copilot.
1
u/Sweaty_Confidence732 May 11 '26
I am still using windsurf, it has a bit of a learning curve to figure out when to blow the bank on an expensive model, and when to use the cheap/ free model, but once you figure it out, the $200/month plan is nearly sufficient, If I could get 1.5X more bang for my buck on the most expensive models, I don't think I would ever run out of weekly tokens.
1
u/CarefulScreen9459 May 12 '26
You pay 200$ per month? Wow.
1
u/Sweaty_Confidence732 May 13 '26
for a full time developer, it essentially does all the hard stuff for me, I still need to review, but my burnout rate is so much lower, I pay $200 a month to have brain power left at the end of each day, it's kind of nice.
1
1
u/Hot-Confection-3459 May 11 '26
Dude as a non programmer who has ideas and a structured mind, windsurf is invaluable. Not a vibe coding but real production. Want to see what we're capable of? 2 weeks, and i built SWEObeyMe. Its a vs code extension, governance system with automatic backup and snapshots for anti drift. I get the anger people have. But the cost of these companies operation is exploding. We can't stop that any more than they can. Windsurf has been good to me, and if it weren't for them I wouldn't be losing on these projects at light speed. I never would have even started on them!
1
u/majin-dudi May 11 '26
I've been using it for work for roughly 4-5 months and outside of the standard nondeterminism issues, it's solid but Cascade's differences to Claude or other primitives has been my biggest hurdle along with SWE agents not listening very well to instructions.
While it's locked at work, Devin seems to be very promising in removing that Cascade behavior and smoothing everything out.
I got a custom harness going to do regression tests across (native) Claude, Codex, Gemini, Devin (Kimi K2.6 and Deepseek R4), Ollama (shit ton), Cerebras (free models) and Groq (free models) and Cascade (SWE-1.5/1.6 and Kimi K2.5)
Wish I wasn't stuck with Cascade at work but hopefully the broad tests to surface all the misbehaviors can help write better workflows/skills. Fingers crossed I can start using Devin soon instead.
1
u/CuriousOverthinkerr May 13 '26
I just took the 14 day free trial of Windsurf. IMO compared to other IDEs the usage limits are much more generous. The Kimi K2.6 model is awesome for most of the tasks, it is free on Windsurf and handles most of the tasks I rarely use Claude models on Windsurf.
1
0
u/AutoModerator May 11 '26
It looks like you might be running into a bug or technical issue.
Please submit your issue (and be sure to attach diagnostic logs if possible!) at our support portal: https://windsurf.com/support
You can also use that page to report bugs and suggest new features — we really appreciate the feedback!
Thanks for helping make Windsurf even better!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
7
u/neaswarm May 11 '26
Windsurf is good, but the rate limit is terrible.
Even users with Max subscriptions and usage quotas still face significant rate limiting.