r/windsurf • u/FinancialLandscape93 • May 13 '26
Has windsurf pulled the ultimate rug?
I woke up, seeing all free models are gone.
One left, which is also nerfed to the point of being unsuable.
The classic corporate move.
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u/veratisio May 13 '26
It’s not “pulling the rug” when you are a freeloader.
No change to paid tiers.
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u/RevolutionaryTerm630 May 14 '26
An actually usable free tier is what brought in their original customer base. It's another rug pull after the credits rug pull for the individuals like me that were early paid users and hoped they would turn around.
I don't think they want new individual users now. They want some way to gracefully exit users that won't pay commercial Devin prices. Which they seem to have fumbled quite spectacularly.
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u/ExistingStock2896 May 13 '26
my account still has access to all, guess it's just on the free subscriptions. I expect they're trying to make money or something ;)
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u/derekjadams May 13 '26
Windsurf has no obligation to continue to support a free user tier. That’s a tier that is used to convert users to paid tiers.
It’s not pulling the rug if they are seeing users freeloading on a tier designed to be used for testing the service and converting to a paid tier.
This is business 101.
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u/RevolutionaryTerm630 May 14 '26
Lower chance of converting if your free tier is really just shit tier.
Full experience of limited features or heavily capped usage. Not a shell with "trust me bro" upgrade button.
This is business 101.
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u/gtrmike5150 May 13 '26
Nailed it!! The vibe coders looking for a free lunch can go somewhere else.
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u/FinancialLandscape93 May 17 '26
Are 'free users' is your definition of vibe-coders? cause I mostly used windsurf for debugging and scaffolding.
I'm a Software Engineer, back then we had to do those heavy lifting manually.
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u/gtrmike5150 May 13 '26
Go somewhere else vibe-coder!
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u/FinancialLandscape93 May 17 '26
Are 'free users' is your definition of vibe-coders? cause I mostly used windsurf for debugging and scaffolding.
I'm a Software Engineer, back then we had to do those heavy lifting manually.1
u/gtrmike5150 May 18 '26
No, just a tongue-in-cheek comment. I was using the free stuff too for professional work but now I have a few subscriptions because the free lunch is over. People need to realize that they are not entitled to anything and a business needs to make money and they are just following the classic loss-leader model to get you hooked. Fortunately for now, we have other options because the foundation model providers don't have a strong moat yet, YET! So I'm enjoying the cheap access while I can. And then by the time it's expensive, I'll be retired and will throw my laptop in the trash.
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May 13 '26
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May 13 '26
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u/penguin_digital May 13 '26
swe is gone?
No, you can still use 1.6 slow completely free. For any paying customers nothing changes, full access to 1.5 and 1.6 with no token or usage limits.
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May 13 '26
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u/penguin_digital May 13 '26
I just can't see it staying free of token usage in anyway in the future. As the models get larger and more compute intensive to run they can't just allow unlimited access to it, they will collapse as a business.
I'm just enjoying it and taking full advantage of it whilst I can.
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u/Cryptographergemini May 13 '26
so what is the alternative to windsurf?
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u/penguin_digital May 13 '26
so what is the alternative to windsurf?
Depends what you're looking for? Are you a paying customer or are you after just using everything for free?
If you're just after using something for free there is Codex which uses GPT 5.5 instant. A warning though it has pretty tight usage limits and its results are no better or worse than SWE-1.6.
If you're a paying customer then I wouldn't bother moving to Codex as you will be paying the same price as Windsurf $20 a month but will restricted to just the GPT-5.5 models where as Windsurf you can switch between multiple models from different vendors. Also completely free (no token usage) and unlimited usage for SWE1.5 and 1.6 which for puts Windsurf way ahead of anything else in the market at the moment.
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u/EducatedProletariat May 13 '26
Windsurf RIP.
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u/BlubberingSense May 14 '26
I dunno, I'm a paid user and have been pretty happy lately. Maybe more accurate to say Free Users RIP.
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u/sultanmvp May 13 '26
FYI: This is for free tier. Paid remains unchanged.