Two things changed since most Windsurf vs Cursor comparisons were written, and neither one is a feature. Cognition, which bought Windsurf in July 2025, renamed the editor Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026. Windsurf.com now redirects to devin.ai, Cascade became Devin Local, and existing installs updated in place. Ten weeks later, on August 14, Cursor announced it had been acquired by SpaceX, the company that absorbed xAI earlier in the year.
So the 2026 question isn't only which editor writes better code. It's which company you're comfortable sending your source code to, and on what terms. I've run vendor reviews on tools that mattered far less than this one. Here's how I'd decide.
Short answer: For most engineering teams, Cursor Teams at $40 per user is the better buy today, mainly because team-wide Privacy Mode is something an admin can enforce. Devin Desktop makes more sense if you want Cognition's cloud agents in the same subscription. Either way, redo your vendor risk review, because both owners changed in the last 15 months.
Pricing side by side
Individual pricing has converged almost exactly.
| Plan | Cursor | Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Hobby: limited Agent requests | Free: light agent quota, unlimited Tab completions and inline edits |
| Entry paid | Pro: $20/mo | Pro: $20/mo |
| Mid tier | Pro+: $60/mo | None |
| Top individual | Ultra: $200/mo | Max: $200/mo |
| Team | $40/user/mo | $80/mo per team + $40/mo per full dev seat (up to 200 users) |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Sources: Cursor's pricing page and Devin's pricing page, both checked October 1, 2026.
If you remember Windsurf Pro at $15, that price is gone. Devin Pro is $20, same as Cursor.
A few details matter more than the headline numbers. Devin Pro includes free use of Cognition's SWE-2 model in Devin Desktop and the CLI through October 16, 2026, plus access to Devin Cloud agents, and you can buy extra usage at API pricing. Cursor's Pro+ tier at $60 has no Devin equivalent, so a developer who outgrows $20 but doesn't need $200 has a cleaner step up on Cursor. Cursor itself recommends Pro+ for daily agent users, which tells you where it expects heavy users to land.
What a team actually pays
Team pricing is where the two split, because Devin charges a flat $80 platform fee on top of seats.
- ▸5 developers: Cursor $200/month, Devin Desktop $280/month
- ▸10 developers: Cursor $400/month, Devin Desktop $480/month
- ▸50 developers: Cursor $2,000/month, Devin Desktop $2,080/month
At 50 seats the gap is $80 a month, and nobody should pick a tool over that. At 5 seats Devin costs 40% more. Small teams feel the platform fee. Large ones won't notice it. Both vendors also meter heavy agent use past the included quota, so budget for overage on your busiest developers instead of assuming the seat price is the bill.
The editors themselves
Both are VS Code forks, so extensions, keybindings and settings carry over from VS Code in either direction. If you're coming from plain VS Code, our VS Code vs Cursor refresh covers what you gain and what breaks.
Cursor's strength is still the editing loop. Tab completion is fast and feels predictive rather than reactive, and the Agent handles multi-file changes well when you scope the task tightly. Cursor has added cloud agents, MCP support, a team marketplace for shared rules and skills, and Bugbot for agentic code review (usage-billed on individual plans and listed as a Teams feature). Since the SpaceX deal it also pushes xAI's Grok models and a Grok Bot, though frontier models from other providers are still available on Pro.
Devin Desktop has moved in a different direction. Cognition calls it an agent command center: one window to run the local agent (Devin Local, the successor to Cascade), launch Devin Cloud sessions, and manage any ACP-compatible agent. Windsurf users who liked Cascade's Flow mode for contained multi-file edits will find Devin Local familiar. The bigger change is the pitch. Cognition wants you delegating whole tasks to cloud agents and reviewing the results, with the editor as the place where review happens.
My take after watching teams adopt both: developers who mostly write code with an assistant beside them prefer Cursor. Teams that already hand tickets to autonomous agents get more out of Devin Desktop, because the cloud agent is part of the same plan instead of a separate purchase.
The part your security team will ask about
I'd spend most of the evaluation time here, and it's where the two products differ most.
Cursor trains on your code only when Privacy Mode is off. Per its data use page, with Privacy Mode on, customer data isn't used for training and Cursor holds zero data retention agreements with its model providers. Privacy Mode is available on every plan including free, and on Teams an admin can switch it on for the whole team, with new members inheriting the setting. Cursor lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 on its security page. The data use page now also references SpaceXAI, so read it alongside your DPA.
Devin Desktop works the other way around. Cognition's security documentation says that by default it may use your data for model training, and that paid-plan users can opt out on the Data Controls page. On Teams, the admin controls that setting. Enterprise contracts require express prior written consent before any training. Cognition holds SOC 2 Type II.
Read that twice. For Devin's free plan, the documentation describes no opt-out, so a developer who installs Devin Desktop on a personal account and opens a company repository may be feeding that code into training. On Cursor, the same developer is protected if they flip one setting, but nothing forces them to.
My rule for either tool: no company code on personal or free accounts. Buy the team plan, enforce the privacy setting centrally, and block unmanaged installs if your endpoint tooling allows it. A $40 seat is cheap next to explaining to a customer why their integration code ended up in someone's training set.
Ownership risk is now a real line item
A year ago both of these were independent, venture-backed startups. Now Cursor belongs to SpaceX, which also owns xAI, and Windsurf belongs to Cognition, whose main product is an autonomous coding agent.
Neither change makes either tool unsafe. Both change who your code passes through and whose commercial priorities shape the roadmap. Cursor's pricing page now advertises generous Grok limits. Cognition renamed a well-known editor to promote its agent brand. If your vendor review approved Anysphere or Codeium in 2025, that approval is stale. Pull the current subprocessor list, check which model providers are enabled for your workspace, and confirm the DPA you signed still covers the entity you now pay.
For regulated shops, I'd also restrict which models developers can select. Cursor's Enterprise tier adds repository, model and MCP access controls plus audit logs. Devin's Enterprise tier lists SAML/OIDC SSO, centralized admin controls and a dedicated deployment option. The team tiers on both give you less control over model routing than most compliance teams will want.
Who should pick which
Pick Cursor if you want the stronger day-to-day editing experience, you need a middle tier between $20 and $200, or you run a small team where Devin's $80 platform fee is a noticeable share of the bill. It's also the easier security sell right now, because team-wide Privacy Mode is simple to enforce. If you're weighing it against Copilot instead, see our Cursor vs GitHub Copilot breakdown.
Pick Devin Desktop if your team already delegates work to autonomous agents, you want Devin Cloud bundled with the editor, or you were happy on Windsurf and don't want to migrate settings for a marginal gain. Set the training opt-out at the team level before anyone opens a production repo.
Hold off on both if your compliance team hasn't reviewed the new owners. Running an AI editor without an approved data agreement is a worse outcome than spending another month on the tool you already have.
For a 10-person team with no special constraints, I'd buy Cursor Teams at $400 a month, turn on team-wide Privacy Mode on day one, and revisit in six months once SpaceX's plans for Cursor are clearer.