Ask HN: Cursor vs. Windsurf?

[shrisukhani]

Do you use an AI IDE? Which one and why?

There’s a bunch of them at this point and it’s kinda hard to figure out one over another. Cursor and Windsurf seem like the leading players - curious what people like about one vs the other.

[OriginalMrPink]

It was Cursor six months ago, VC with Copilot three months ago, and currently it's Windsurf / Cursor. Copilot is lagging with features, it used to be Chat & Compose, now it's Agents and MCP stuff that's missing. But once it's in there, it just seems more robust and better integrated with everything imo.

[TiredOfLife]

IMHO best feature of these things is the autocomplete. And Windsurf has that feature for free including the Cursor like Tab Tab (supercomplete in Windsurf)

[ai_coder42]

They're all playing a catchup game with each other on features. Some like GH Copilot is really falling behind as of right now. I use cursor because i like how things are set up makes sense to me.

My recommendation: Try both. I mean really give them a fair chance, atleast 2 weeks. and see which one you like. Happy coding!

[olibaw]

This isn't shockingly original advice, but it did spur me to stop overthinking it and just spend some time with 'em. Tx!

[shrisukhani]

I’m a happy Cursor user. Main reason is it just works great and was the first one I tried.

[senordevnyc]

I really wish there was something as good as Cursor for Jetbrains.

[ai_coder42]

They did announce Junie. Close enough to cursor i feel. Link: https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/

But, what is stopping you from moving from Jetbrains to Cursor or the likes? AFAIK, most of the functionality can be achieved via plugins / extensions on Cursor.

Just Curious.

[aristofun]

Because vs code is just far inferior IDE in comparison to jetbrains.

They (ms) went a long way in customization, bells and whistles, but haven’t yet nailed the basics.

Most of really experienced developers i know hate it.

[decide1000]

I use Cursor, switch to Jetbrains to validate the code.

I don't like the VScode ui. It feels more like a 1 solution-fits-all. Jetbrains has much deeper understanding of the (debug) tools I use.

Happy customer for 4 years.

[gardenhedge]

I just use vs code and a AI chat like grok or deepseek

[surrTurr]

use windsurf (or codeium) if you want to put up with cringe hard limits on prompts etc.

imo cursor all the way