Agentic harness comparison
Cursor vs Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)
Cursor is part of SpaceX and offers IDE, CLI and cloud workflows. Cognition's Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf, offers Devin Local and ACP paths; its legacy Cascade documentation conflicts with the published retirement date. Compare the agent actually enabled in the account. CLI workflows can run beside an existing editor.
Details last verified October 2, 2026
Cursor
Cursor
IDE, standalone CLI and cloud agents · Hybrid
Cognition
Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)
Own IDE with Devin Local and ACP agents · Hybrid
| Specification | Cursor | Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | ||
| Vendor | Cursor | Cognition |
| Runs in | ||
| Runs in | IDE, standalone CLI and cloud agents | Own IDE with Devin Local and ACP agents |
| Editor support | ||
| Editor support | Cursor IDE (VS Code fork), Terminal CLI beside any editor, Cloud agents (web/mobile) | Devin Desktop, Local or remote workspaces, ACP agents |
| Autonomy | ||
| Autonomy | Hybrid | Hybrid |
| Pricing model | ||
| Pricing model | Hybrid | Hybrid |
| Requires changing editor | ||
| Requires changing editor | Winner: No | Yes |
| Publisher-reported SWE-bench Verified (Background Agent, Claude Sonnet 4.6) · source date 2026-04-19 | ||
| Publisher-reported SWE-bench Verified (Background Agent, Claude Sonnet 4.6) · source date 2026-04-19 | 65.7% | Not verifiedUnverified |
Dates refer to the linked source’s publication or capture unless it explicitly states when the benchmark was measured. Values we could not confirm are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- Cursor · Publisher-reported SWE-bench Verified (Background Agent, Claude Sonnet 4.6): source
Cursor
Cursor, now part of SpaceX, offers an AI-native VS Code-based editor, a standalone terminal agent and cloud agents. The IDE path changes editor; the CLI can run beside an existing editor. Grok and Composer are first-party models, with third-party models available subject to plan and policy.
Best for
- Daily feature work
- Multi-file edits in-editor
- Teams already on VS Code
Watch out
SpaceX-owned Cursor currently prices Hobby free, Pro $20/month, Pro+ $60, Ultra $200, Teams Standard $40/user/month and Premium $120 (5x Standard Agent limits). India-only Start is ₹649/month including tax, restricted to Cursor Models and without the Other Models pool or on-demand usage. Individual plans have separate monthly Cursor Models and Other Models pools; third-party models are charged at API rates. Teams/Enterprise add $0.25/MTok on third-party direct, Auto and BYOK usage, not first-party models. Eligible US-only residency adds a 10% model-price uplift. Old $20/$70/$400 included-dollar figures are not currently established (https://cursor.com/pricing; https://cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing). OpenAI's August 28 notice proposes a November 12, 2026 (2026-11-12) wind-down; it does not prove OpenAI models have already been removed (https://openai.com/index/our-decision-on-cursor-following-its-acquisition-by-spacex/). Privacy Mode prevents training, subject to abuse-investigation retention and explicitly approved non-ZDR models such as Fable; BYOK requests still use Cursor's backend. Current Instant Grep builds/searches its index locally without storing code embeddings, but opened file context can still reach model providers. Ignore rules do not block terminal or MCP reads (https://cursor.com/data-use; https://cursor.com/docs/context/codebase-indexing; https://cursor.com/docs/reference/ignore-file). The retained 65.7% benchmark is an April 19 publisher compilation for Background Agent with Sonnet 4.6, not a current-product measurement or an independently reproduced official submission. CLI/cloud availability means switching IDE is optional (https://cursor.com/docs/cli/overview; https://cursor.com/blog/joining-spacex).
Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)
Devin Desktop is Cognition's IDE, formerly Windsurf. Devin Local shares its harness with the Devin CLI and is the primary bundled local agent; supported ACP agents can also be selected. It offers macOS, Windows and Linux packages and local/remote workspaces, separately from Devin Cloud.
Best for
- Teams evaluating the current Devin Desktop surface
- Teams migrating from Windsurf
Watch out
October 2 pricing lists Free $0, Pro $20/month, Max $200 and Teams $80/month plus $40 per full developer seat; Enterprise is negotiated. Paid quota refreshes daily/weekly and extra usage bills at API prices. Self-serve ChatGPT Plus/Pro linking covers eligible GPT usage only, excluding fast/priority variants; other ensemble models still use Devin quota and exhausted ChatGPT usage automatically falls back to Devin billing. The price page says SWE-2 free through October 16, while model docs say October 15: treat the boundary as unresolved and check your account. Legacy enterprise SWE-2 has a separate discounted tariff. Current Local docs preserve old Cascade histories, support ACP agents, and say Local lacks persistent memories, workflows and App Deploys; the September 8 changelog's removal statement does not establish a universal absence of legacy history. Enterprise Local access requires an admin. Provider retention and permissions depend on the deployment; FedRAMP-specific admin guidance is not a universal desktop policy.
Common questions
Cursor vs Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Do I have to change editor to use Cursor or Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)?
How are Cursor and Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) priced?
Is Cursor or Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) better for large refactors?
Will my project rules transfer between Cursor and Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)?
Is Cursor free enough for daily agent work?
Is Devin Desktop the same product as Devin Cloud?
Do coding agents replace code review?
Should we harden MCP before rolling out a coding agent?
Next step
Which one fits
Autonomy and editor constraints decide this far more reliably than a benchmark score.
If most of your week is small, frequent edits, an assistive workflow beats delegation and an agentic harness sits idle while billing. If you regularly hand over work spanning many files, the reverse is true.
Where one tool requires changing editor and the other does not, that difference usually outweighs any capability gap across a team — rollouts fail on adoption, not capability.
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