A hands-on comparison of Cursor and Windsurf, two AI-powered VSCode forks, tested side by side while developing the Neon Python driver. Cursor stands out for tab completions and fine-grained context control (custom rules, docs, git history), while Windsurf excels at automatic context indexing and codebase-wide awareness in agentic workflows. Both agents struggle with complex logic but shine at test generation and frontend tasks. Windsurf's recently released Wave 5 with Windsurf Tab has narrowed the tab completion gap significantly.
Table of contents
What feels the same?Tab Completions: Cursor’s Tab vs. Windsurf’s TabsContext management: Attaching the relevant informationAgent mode: Cursor’s Composer vs Windsurf’s CascadeConclusion1 Impression