Windsurf Alternatives in 2026
Windsurf got acquired. Ours will not be.
In July 2025, Cognition AI acquired Windsurf for ~$250M -- days after Google poached the founding team. The IDE you chose is now a distribution channel for an autonomous agent company. Bodega One Code is independently owned, locally run, and free for everyone in the open beta.
What changed. What you can own instead.
Windsurf (post-acquisition)
- Acquired by Cognition AI (~$250M, July 2025) -- product direction now serves Cognition's roadmap
- Founding CEO and co-founder left for Google before the acquisition closed
- Cloud-dependent -- all code leaves your machine for Cognition's servers
- March 2026 pricing overhaul (Windsurf era): Pro $20/mo, Max $200/mo, Teams $40/user/mo, plus a Light tier billed as "unlimited" but gated by a daily/weekly refresh allowance. Flexible credits replaced with strict daily quotas -- sprint on one big project and you hit your limit mid-task. Under the Devin Desktop rename, Teams shifted again to $80/mo base plus $40 per developer seat.
- Windsurf 2.0 (April 16) bundled Devin Cloud into the IDE. Devin for Terminal (April 28) and Devin Review for all paying users (May 6) followed -- the IDE is now a distribution surface for Cognition's autonomous agent stack
- SWE-1.6 (April 7) is free for everyone for 3 months at 200 tok/s -- but the 950 tok/s Cerebras speed tier and the latest Claude Opus 4.7 (April 16) / GPT-5.5 (April 24) frontier models gate via plan tier and usage caps
Bodega One Code
- Independent product -- no acquisition risk, no VC exit pressure on your tooling
- Free for everyone in the open beta. At full release: free Personal, $39 one-time Pro (commercial).
- Local-first -- your code runs on your machine, not Cognition's infrastructure
- BYOLLM: you control which models you use, no platform lock-in
- Air-gap mode: 9 enforcement layers. Zero bytes leave your machine.
Everything Windsurf offered. Plus the things it never could.
Acquisition-Proof
Your Bodega One Code license cannot be acquired, rebranded, or repriced. You pay once. You own it. No VC roadmap determines what features you get. No acquirer can change what you paid for.
Local-First Architecture
Windsurf requires cloud connectivity for every inference call. Bodega One Code runs models on your hardware through Ollama and local providers. Your code never leaves your machine unless you choose a cloud LLM provider yourself.
Cost Certainty
Windsurf charges monthly. Cognition now controls that pricing. In March 2026, they dropped flexible credits for strict daily quotas. Sprint on a big project and you hit your limit mid-task. Bodega One Code is in open beta and free for everyone right now, commercial use included. At full release: free Personal, $39 one-time Pro for commercial. No monthly meter either way.
No Roadmap Drift
Windsurf 2.0 (April 16) bundled Devin Cloud into the IDE. Devin for Terminal followed April 28. Devin Review opened to all paying IDE users May 6. The April-May 2026 cadence confirms it: Windsurf is now Cognition's distribution channel for Devin. Bodega One Code's roadmap is simple: the best local-first AI IDE for individual developers and small teams.
QEL Verification
Quality Enforcement Layer runs three verification levels on every code change. Pattern checks, compile gates, structural verification. Not a linter. A verification pipeline that catches what raw LLM output misses.
BYOLLM
10+ provider presets. Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Together AI, OpenRouter, and more. You choose the model. No lock-in to Cognition's model stack or whatever pricing they apply to inference.
The acquisition. The math. The alternative.
What happened to Windsurf
Early 2025
Codeium rebrands to Windsurf. $82M ARR, 350+ enterprise customers, growing fast. Developers love Cascade.
July 2025
Google acquires CEO Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen in a $2.4B licensing deal. The founding team is gone over a weekend.
July 14, 2025
Cognition AI (makers of Devin) acquires the remaining Windsurf entity -- employees, IP, product, all customers -- for ~$250M.
Post-acquisition
Employees described their mood as "very bleak" before the deal. All received vesting acceleration. The product now lives inside Cognition, which raised $1B at a $26B valuation in May 2026.
April-May 2026
Windsurf 2.0 ships with integrated Devin Cloud (April 16). Devin for Terminal launches as a CLI agent for all subscribers (April 28, v2.1.29). Devin Review opens to all paying IDE users (May 6, v2.2.17). SWE-1.6 model debuts April 7, free for everyone for 3 months at 200 tok/s; Cerebras 950 tok/s speed tier gates to paying plans. Claude Opus 4.7 (Apr 16) and GPT-5.5 (Apr 24) added to the model lineup.
June 2, 2026
Cognition retires the Windsurf brand and renames the IDE Devin Desktop. The editor you adopted as Codeium, then Windsurf, now ships under the Devin name: the third name in 18 months. Devin Cloud agent access now starts on the $20/mo Pro plan; the free tier gets local agents only.
Going forward
The April-May 2026 cadence confirms the direction: Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) is Cognition's primary distribution channel for the Devin agent stack. Every release this spring tightened Devin's role inside the IDE.
Cost Over Time
| Period | Windsurf | Bodega One Code |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month | $20/month (quota-based) | Free (beta) |
| 6 months | ~$120 | Free (beta) |
| 12 months | ~$240 | Free (beta) |
| 12 months (Max tier) | $2,400/yr | Free (beta) |
| 24 months | ~$480 | Free (beta) |
Bodega One Code is free for everyone in the open beta; a $39 one-time Pro commercial license arrives at full release. Windsurf Pro is $20/month. Max tier is $200/month. Teams $40/user/month. Plus Free and Light tiers (Light is billed as "unlimited" but gated by a daily/weekly refresh allowance). Daily usage quotas introduced March 2026. Tab autocomplete unlimited on all plans. SWE-1.6 free for everyone 3 months at 200 tok/s; 950 tok/s Cerebras speed tier requires paying plan. Verified windsurf.com/pricing 2026-05-22.
Your Code, Their Servers
Windsurf is cloud-dependent by architecture. Every inference call leaves your machine and goes to Cognition's infrastructure. Under the acquisition, Cognition controls the data policy. Bodega One Code runs models locally via Ollama and local providers. In air-gap mode, 9 independent enforcement layers block all network access. Zero bytes leave your machine. Not managed by a $26B acquirer. Controlled by you.
Build on infrastructure you control
9 independent air-gap enforcement layers. Any LLM provider you choose. A standalone IDE that does not require a cloud account, a subscription, or someone else's roadmap.
Code that lands clean.
Every file Bodega One Code writes passes through three verification levels before the change lands. Not a linter. A verification pipeline that Windsurf does not have.
Incremental Verification
Pattern and compile check after every file write.
Micro-Proof Gates
tsc / py_compile runs every second write.
Full Verification
Structural verifier post-loop. Pass threshold 80 for new files.
Switching from
Windsurf.
Is Windsurf still called Windsurf?+
No. On June 2, 2026, Cognition renamed the Windsurf IDE to Devin Desktop, retiring the Windsurf brand (which was itself a 2025 rebrand of Codeium). Same lineage, new name, now positioned around Cognition's Devin agent. For a current head-to-head, see our Devin Desktop comparison at /alternatives/devin-desktop.
Windsurf still works fine. Why does the acquisition matter?+
Right now, the product works. The acquisition matters because: pricing is now controlled by a company with different incentives, the founding team that made the product decisions is gone, the roadmap now serves Cognition's autonomous agent strategy, and "works today" and "works in 12 months" are different questions when ownership changes. Developers who relied on Codeium before it became Windsurf already know how product priorities shift after a rebranding. This is a bigger shift.
Windsurf's Cascade feature is unique. Does Bodega One Code have something similar?+
Cascade is multi-file agentic editing -- you describe a change, it rewrites across your codebase. Bodega One Code's autonomous agent does the same: it reads, writes, and verifies across your full project with 26 built-in tools including file operations, terminal execution, web search, and code analysis. The difference is Bodega One Code runs locally. No cloud API call required.
Could Bodega One Code get acquired too?+
Any company could be acquired. What we can tell you: Bodega One Code has no VC investors with exit requirements, no board pushing for a liquidity event, and no growth metrics that require an enterprise pivot. We are a bootstrapped product built for developers. More importantly -- your license. When you pay once and own it, a hypothetical future acquisition cannot reprice what you already bought.
What happened to the Windsurf team?+
In July 2025, Google poached Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen in a $2.4B licensing deal. Days later, Cognition AI (makers of Devin) acquired the remaining Windsurf entity for ~$250M. All employees received vesting acceleration. The people who built and ran the product you chose are no longer steering it.
Does the acquisition affect my data privacy?+
Windsurf was always cloud-dependent -- your code was going to their servers before and after the acquisition. Under Cognition's ownership, the data policies and infrastructure are now Cognition's responsibility. Bodega One Code runs models locally via Ollama and local providers. In air-gap mode, 9 independent enforcement layers block all network access. Zero bytes leave your machine. Not controlled by Cognition. Controlled by you.
When is Bodega One Code available?+
Beta is free and open to everyone. Full launch coming later this year. Download free at bodegaone.ai/download.
Ready to make the switch? Read the step-by-step Windsurf migration guide for a full walkthrough -- what carries over, what's different, and how to set up your local stack.
Own your IDE. Not a subscription to someone else's acquisition.
Free for personal use. Local-first. 26 built-in tools. An autonomous agent that verifies its own work. No acquirer can reprice what you already own.
Download FreeFree for everyone in the open beta. $39 Pro one-time (commercial) at full release. Windows, macOS, Linux.