Aider vs Windsurf.dev
Aider uniquely has 5 features · Windsurf.dev uniquely has 2 features.
| Aider | Windsurf.dev | |
|---|---|---|
| Company | ||
| Founded | 2023 | 2022 |
| HQ | — | Mountain View, CA, USA |
| AI model | Claude 3.7 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1, OpenAI o1/o3-mini/GPT-4o, and others | Cascade (proprietary, powered by Claude/GPT-4 class models) |
| User base | — | 500K+ |
| Platforms | CLI (Linux, macOS, Windows) | Web, Windows, macOS, Linux (Windsurf IDE desktop app) |
| Languages | 100+ programming languages including Python, JavaScript, Rust, Ruby, Go, C++, PHP, HTML, CSS | 25+ |
| Pricing | ||
| Pricing model | Usage-based | — |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | No | — |
| Starting price | Free — Open Source | Free |
| Enterprise | — | Custom |
| Refund policy | Not applicable — free and open source | — |
| All plans | Open Source / FreeFree usage | FreeFreePro$20/moMax$200/moTeams$60/mo per userEnterpriseCustom |
| Positioning | ||
| Best for | Developers who want AI pair programming in their local terminal via open-source tooling | Developers seeking AI-powered full-stack code generation, refactoring, and workflow automation within an intelligent IDE |
| Differentiator | Fully free and open-source; users pay only for their chosen AI API (OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, etc.) with no platform subscription fee | Windsurf features Cascade, an agentic AI engine with deep multi-file context awareness that can autonomously plan and execute complex coding tasks across an entire codebase rather than just completing single lines or snippets. |
| Competitors | GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Continue | GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Codeium, Tabnine, Amazon Q Developer |
| Features | ||
| Bring Your Own API Key | ✓ | — |
| Multi Model Support | ✓ | — |
| Open Source | ✓ | — |
| Terminal/Cli Based | ✓ | — |
| Cli Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Code Completion | ✕ | ✓ |
| Code Generation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Code Review | ✓ | ✓ |
| Codebase Indexing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Debugging | ✓ | ✓ |
| Git Integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| IDE Plugins | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi Language Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Refactoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Security Scanning | ✕ | — |
| Self Hosted Option | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team Features | ✕ | ✓ |
| Test Generation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Integrations | ||
| API Access | ✓ | — |
| Github Integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gitlab Integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Key Integrations | OpenAI API, Anthropic API, DeepSeek API, local LLMs, git, IDE/editor comment workflow, voice input | GitHub, GitLab, Node.js, Next.js, React, Tailwind CSS, Jest, Socket.io, REST APIs, Storybook |
| Vscode Extension | ✓ | ✓ |