Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) vs Continue
Detailed side-by-side comparison to help you choose the right tool
Windsurf (now Devin Desktop)
🔴DeveloperAI Coding
Agentic AI IDE — originally from Codeium, now owned by Cognition and rebranding to Devin Desktop. The Cascade agent does deep-context, multi-file edits with inline diffs.
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Starting Price
FreeContinue
🔴DeveloperAI Coding
Open-source AI coding extension for VS Code and JetBrains — bring any model, configure custom rules, share assistants across your team.
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CustomFeature Comparison
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💡 Our Take
Choose Continue.dev if you want to stay in your current IDE, run local models for privacy, or enforce standards-as-code on PRs. Choose Windsurf if you want an integrated agentic editor experience with Cascade-style multi-file workflows and are willing to adopt a new IDE for it.
Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) - Pros & Cons
Pros
- ✓Agentic feel is closer to 'pair-programmer' than Cursor's chat-driven model
- ✓Multi-file edits with inline diffs are excellent for whole-feature work
- ✓MCP client support is mature — real tool use, not just chat
- ✓Devin Cloud access from inside the IDE post-acquisition is a unique combo
- ✓Enterprise VPC + SAML/OIDC option is rare among agentic IDEs
- ✓Free tier is still usable for hobby projects
Cons
- ✗Mid-rebrand to 'Devin Desktop' is confusing — docs, billing, marketplace are inconsistent
- ✗Cascade is aggressive — when it picks a wrong direction it can break code across many files
- ✗Pro price rose from $15 to $20/month, and the new $200 Max tier surprised some users
- ✗Indexer can lag on very large monorepos, slowing the first edit
- ✗Cursor's UX is still smoother for many users coming from VS Code
Continue - Pros & Cons
Pros
- ✓Open-source under Apache 2.0 — no vendor lock-in or proprietary protocols
- ✓Genuinely supports JetBrains as a first-class citizen, not an afterthought
- ✓YAML config and Continue Hub make team-wide standardization trivial
- ✓Transparent pricing: $3/M tokens Starter, $20/seat/month Team — no hidden seat costs
- ✓Mix local and hosted models in one extension — cheap autocomplete, expensive chat
- ✓Strong on-prem story for regulated enterprises (BYOK, internal proxies, no telemetry)
Cons
- ✗Less polished UX than closed-source competitors like Cursor or GitHub Copilot
- ✗Agent mode is younger than Cline's and has fewer guardrails
- ✗Hub assistants quality varies — vetting community configs takes effort
- ✗$3/M tokens Starter is competitive but not the cheapest if you BYO API keys directly
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Read the full reviews to make an informed decision