These four tools are all sold as "AI coding", but they are built differently and they bill differently. Two are AI-native editors you install, one is an assistant that lives inside the editor you already use, and one runs entirely in your browser — hosting included. This guide compares the form factors first, then decodes the pricing: credits, quotas and usage pools that make the monthly sticker price only half the story.
New plans via the X Subscription: Plus $8/mo (Grok models only), Premium $30/mo. Existing customers may still be on the older Pro plan at $20/mo — see the pricing warning below.
Free plan available. Renamed Devin Desktop in June 2026; the editor and accounts carried over.
Cheapest paid entry of the four. Business $19/user/mo, Enterprise $39/user/mo.
Core $20/mo ($18/mo billed annually). Pro $100/mo covers up to 15 builders — it is a flat team price, not a per-seat one.
| Cursor | Windsurf (Devin Desktop) | GitHub Copilot | Replit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form factor | AI-native editor (install, VS Code based) | AI-native editor (install, VS Code based) | Assistant / plugin inside your existing editor, plus GitHub and CLI | Browser platform: editor + agent + hosting in one place |
| Best for | Solo developers and teams who want the agent inside a full editor, working on a local codebase | Developers comparing AI editors who prefer quota-based limits over a credit meter | Developers and teams already settled in VS Code / JetBrains and on GitHub | Builders who want to go from idea to a hosted app without setting up a local environment |
| Free option | Yes — free tier with a limited agent allowance | Yes — light daily/weekly quota, limited models; Tab completions and inline edits unlimited | Yes — 2,000 completions/month, limited chat and agent use, automatic model selection only | Starter has been documented as free, but the pricing page checked in late 2026 listed only Core, Pro and Enterprise — confirm whether a free tier is offered when you sign up |
| Paid plans from | New sign-ups: Plus $8/mo (Grok models only), Premium $30/mo. Older lineup (existing customers): Pro $20/mo | Pro $20/mo; Max $200/mo | Pro $10/mo; Pro+ $39/mo; Max $100/mo | Core $20/mo ($18/mo billed annually); Pro $100/mo ($90/mo billed annually) |
| How usage is billed | Weekly usage pool for its own models (shared with Grok). Third-party models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) are not included on new plans — billed separately at API list prices | Daily and weekly quotas measured in tokens. The quota size is not published. Extra usage on paid plans is sold at API prices; the vendor's own models do not consume quota | GitHub AI Credits: 1 credit = $0.01, charged per token by model. Completions on paid plans are unlimited and do not consume credits | Credits plus effort-based billing: each Agent checkpoint is priced by how much work it took. No fixed price per checkpoint is published. Credits also cover publishing and compute |
| Usage included in the entry paid plan | New Plus: a base weekly pool, Grok models only. Older Pro: $20 of third-party model usage included | A daily/weekly quota (size not published) | Pro: 1,500 AI Credits/mo ($15 worth). Pro+: 7,000 ($70 worth). Max: 20,000 ($200 worth) | Core: $20/mo of model credits, plus Free Mode (published as up to 30 hours of chat and 60 projects) |
| Team pricing | Teams seats $30 / $100 / $200 per user/mo (new lineup) | $80/mo team base + $40/mo per full seat; free "flex" seats draw on shared paid usage only | Business $19/user/mo (1,900 credits per user, pooled across the org); Enterprise $39/user/mo (3,900 per user, pooled) | Pro $100/mo flat for up to 15 builders — not priced per seat. Enterprise is custom |
| Can you estimate your real monthly cost in advance? | Partly — if you stay on the included models, yes; if you rely on third-party models, your total is subscription + their full API cost | Hard — quota sizes are not published, so you can only learn your pace by using it | Yes, the most calculable of the four — credit value and per-model token prices are published | Hard — checkpoint prices vary by effort and are not published in advance |
| Trade-off to know | Pricing changed repeatedly in 2026 and two lineups coexist — the plan name and price at checkout are what count | The product was renamed (Devin Desktop) and its credit system was abolished in 2026; older guides describing "500 credits" are out of date | It does not replace your editor — if you want an AI-native editor experience, that is Cursor or Windsurf's shape, not Copilot's | The same credits pay for agent work, hosting and compute, so a live, busy app can consume the allowance you expected to spend on building |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published in November 2026. Cursor warning in full: since 12 October 2026, new Cursor subscriptions are sold through the X Subscription (Free / Plus $8 / Premium $30 / Super $100 / Ultra $200), while Cursor's documentation has continued to show the older lineup (Pro $20, Pro+ $60, Ultra $200, Teams $40 or $120 per user) that existing customers can stay on. If a price you remember differs from the checkout page, the checkout page is the current one. Plans change frequently — confirm the current price, included usage and model terms on the vendor's site before you buy.
The four tools meter AI use four different ways, so the honest comparison is not "$20 vs $10" — it is "what does a month of your usage cost on each billing model?" The examples below are arithmetic on published prices only. The usage amounts are stated assumptions for illustration, not measurements of any tool's output or speed.
Copilot publishes both its credit value (1 credit = $0.01) and the credits included in each plan, so the maths is fully checkable. Assume a month in which your chat and agent work consumes $15, $70 or $200 worth of model usage (completions are unlimited on paid plans and consume no credits):
| Assumed model usage | Pro $10/mo (includes $15) | Pro+ $39/mo (includes $70) | Max $100/mo (includes $200) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $15 worth | $10 | $39 | $100 |
| $70 worth | $10 + $55 overage = $65 | $39 | $100 |
| $200 worth | $10 + $185 overage = $195 | $39 + $130 overage = $169 | $100 |
Overage applies where additional paid usage is enabled; you can also cap spending and simply stop at the included allowance. The pattern, not the exact row, is the point: higher tiers are larger pre-purchases of usage, and the "expensive" plan becomes the cheapest one once your usage passes its included amount.
Under Copilot's previous request-based system (which survives only on some existing annual plans), GitHub published per-model multipliers: a monthly allowance of 300 requests covered roughly 909 prompts on a lightweight model counted at 0.33×, but only about 11 prompts on a top-tier model counted at 27× — 300 ÷ 0.33 and 300 ÷ 27. The current credit system prices models per token instead of per request, but the principle is identical on every tool here: routinely choosing the most powerful model consumes your included allowance far faster than the headline plan size suggests. Set a spending cap before you make a premium model your default.
For a five-person team, seat maths gives: Copilot Business $19 × 5 = $95/mo; Replit Pro $100/mo flat (up to 15 builders, so the same $100 covers a team of ten); Cursor Teams $30 × 5 = $150/mo on the new lineup; Windsurf Teams $80 base + $40 × 5 = $280/mo. Two cautions: team tiers mostly buy administration — central billing, policies, analytics, pooled credits — rather than proportionally more AI usage per person (Copilot Business, for example, includes 1,900 credits per user against Pro's 1,500). And Replit's flat price cuts the other way for a solo builder, who pays the full $100 alone.
Windsurf and Replit cannot be run through Example 1 at all: Windsurf does not publish its quota sizes, and Replit does not publish a price per Agent checkpoint. That a total cannot be calculated in advance is itself a comparison point — budget for a trial month and watch the usage dashboard.
Cursor is a standalone editor built on VS Code, designed around an agent that reads your whole project, edits multiple files and runs commands for you to review. What you pay depends on when you subscribed. New subscriptions (since October 2026) are sold through the X Subscription: a free tier, Plus at $8/mo covering Grok models only, Premium at $30/mo with four times the Plus usage pool, Super at $100/mo and Ultra at $200/mo. On these plans, models from other vendors — Claude, GPT, Gemini — are not included in the subscription at all and are billed separately at API list prices. Existing customers can remain on the older lineup — Pro $20/mo including $20 of third-party model usage, Pro+ $60/mo including $70, Ultra $200/mo including $400 — where usage beyond the included amount is billed in arrears at API rates. Tab completions are positioned as unlimited on the paid plans.
Windsurf is the other AI-native editor here: a VS Code-based editor whose agent (Cascade, now under the Devin brand) works across your codebase. Its owner, Cognition, renamed the product Devin Desktop in June 2026; existing accounts and settings carried over, and searches for "Windsurf" still land on the same product. Pricing was restructured at the same time: the old prompt-credit system (the "500 credits" figure in older guides) was abolished in March 2026 and replaced with daily and weekly usage quotas. The free plan carries a light quota and limited models, with Tab completions and inline edits unlimited. Pro is $20/mo with a larger quota and all models; the vendor's own models do not consume quota, and extra usage can be bought at API prices. Max is $200/mo. Teams pricing is an $80/mo base plus $40/mo per full seat.
Copilot is the plugin-shaped option: instead of moving you into a new editor, it adds completions, chat and agent features to VS Code, JetBrains IDEs and other editors, and connects to your work on GitHub, including a cloud agent and code review. The free plan includes 2,000 completions a month and limited chat and agent use with automatic model selection. Pro ($10/mo) adds unlimited completions, model choice and 1,500 AI Credits a month; Pro+ ($39/mo) includes 7,000 credits and access to the highest-tier models; Max ($100/mo) includes 20,000 credits. Since June 2026, chat and agent usage on all plans is metered in AI Credits at per-token model prices (1 credit = $0.01), as worked through in Example 1 above. For teams, Business ($19/user/mo) and Enterprise ($39/user/mo) pool each seat's credits across the organisation and add policy and administration controls.
Replit is the different shape in this comparison: a complete environment in a browser tab — editor, an AI Agent that builds and modifies apps, compute, databases and publishing — aimed at getting from an idea to a live app without a local setup. Core ($20/mo, $18/mo billed annually) includes full Agent access, $20/mo of model credits, a Free Mode allowance (published as up to 30 hours of chat and 60 projects), up to 5 collaborators and 2 parallel agents. Pro ($100/mo, $90/mo billed annually) raises the credit allowance to $100, covers up to 15 builders at that flat price, and adds more parallel agents and longer database rollback. The old per-seat Teams plan was retired in February 2026 and replaced by Pro. The billing caveat matters here: Agent work is charged per checkpoint, priced by effort, with no fixed price published per checkpoint, and the same credits also pay for publishing and compute once your app is live.
Want an editor built around the agent → Cursor or Windsurf. Want to keep your editor and GitHub workflow → Copilot. Want no local environment at all, hosting included → Replit. Shape mismatches cause more regret than price differences.
Completions are cheap or unlimited almost everywhere; agent sessions on top-tier models are what consume allowances. If you will run agents daily on the strongest models, price the tier whose included usage covers that (see the worked examples), not the entry tier.
Multiply per-seat prices by your real headcount, add base fees (Windsurf Teams carries an $80/mo base), and compare against flat team pricing (Replit Pro) if your team is within its builder limit. Then ask what the team tier actually buys — usually administration and pooling, not proportionally more usage.
Run one real project through the free plans first. The moment you pay, set the usage budget or spending limit each vendor offers: on metered plans (Copilot credits, Replit checkpoints, Cursor's third-party models) the cap is what turns an open-ended meter into a fixed cost.
An AI editor (Cursor, Windsurf) is a complete editor built around the AI agent — you move your work into it. A plugin-style assistant (GitHub Copilot) adds AI features inside the editor you already use. Replit is a browser platform: the editor, the agent, the computers your code runs on and the hosting are all provided in one tab. The trade-off is control and familiarity versus zero setup.
Because Cursor changed its pricing several times during 2026. Since October 2026, new subscriptions are sold through the X Subscription (Plus $8, Premium $30, Super $100, Ultra $200), while existing customers can stay on the older Pro ($20) / Pro+ ($60) / Ultra ($200) lineup, and older documentation still shows those prices. Treat the checkout page for your account as the source of truth, and check which models your plan actually includes.
Each vendor meters the expensive part — agent work on large models — in its own unit. Copilot uses AI Credits (1 = $0.01) charged per token at each model's published price. Cursor's new plans give a weekly pool for its included models and bill other vendors' models separately at API prices. Windsurf uses daily and weekly quotas whose sizes are not published. Replit charges per Agent checkpoint according to effort. In all four systems, choosing a more powerful model consumes your allowance faster; completions are generally unlimited or cheap.
It depends on the tool and your settings. On Copilot and on Cursor's older plans, additional usage can be billed at published rates if you have enabled it — or you can cap spending and wait for the reset. On Windsurf, agent work pauses or falls back to models that do not consume quota until the daily or weekly reset, with extra usage available to buy on paid plans. On Replit, work beyond your credits is billed pay-as-you-go, which is why setting a usage limit first is strongly advised.
It depends on what you are leaving Cursor for. Windsurf is the closest shape — another AI-native editor — with quota-based limits instead of Cursor's pools. Copilot is the alternative if your real preference is your current editor plus GitHub integration, at a lower entry price. Replit is the alternative if you would rather not run a local editor at all. All three judgements are based on published form factors and pricing, not on measured coding quality.
No — and that is deliberate. This guide is compiled from the vendors' publicly available pricing and specifications, checked in November 2026; it is not hands-on testing, and we do not publish speed or code-quality scores we did not measure. Where vendors claim performance figures, we treat them as vendor claims. The worked cost examples are arithmetic on published prices with their assumptions stated next to them.
As of November 2026, none of the four vendors offers a confirmed public affiliate program that pays publishers in cash: Cursor's referral scheme was credit-based and has been reported closed, Windsurf offers customer referral benefits rather than a publisher program, GitHub's partner programs are for technology and channel partners, and Replit's referral scheme pays in platform credits. The links here therefore go to the vendors' official sites and earn this site nothing.