Pi vs Windsurf: Which AI Agent Is Better?
An in-depth comparison of Pi and Windsurf across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
An in-depth comparison of Pi and Windsurf across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
Looking for the Oh My Pi (omp) fork instead?See Oh My Pi vs Windsurf →
Either way, you pay for the model calls. A median coding-agent day on our gateway is 95 requests and 8.6 million tokens. The table prices every step at one model’s rate.
Pi runs on Standard Compute, where each step goes to the cheapest model that can do it: routine steps go to efficient open models, hard ones to frontier models such as Claude Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra.
| Model | Typical day | Busy day |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $7.34 | $59.10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $3.67 | $29.55 |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.23 | $2.43 |
Fixed monthly plans from $19. Eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute first, no card. Trial terms
Pick a winner in each category. You can change your vote anytime.
PiWindsurfChoose Pi if you are developers who want a fast, minimal, hackable terminal agent with full control over context and models. Choose Windsurf if you are developers who want an affordable AI editor with agentic capabilities.
In our editorial scoring, Pi leads in 3 of six categories (reliability, speed and value), while Windsurf leads in 2 (autonomy and ease of use). On price, Pi runs free (mit), bring your own model and is open source; Windsurf runs free / $20 pro / $200 max (as devin desktop) and is proprietary.
What it costs to run Pi
Best API for Pi →
4 options compared, with prices and limits
Standard Compute sends each step to the cheapest model that can do it, on providers we vet for price, uptime and speed. Plans start at $19 a month, and eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute with no card. Choose your agent below to connect.
See the trial and activation steps →
More on Pi: What Does the Pi Coding Agent Cost to Run, and How Do You Make It Predictable? · How do I use DeepSeek in the Pi coding agent?
Pi is an open-source terminal coding agent and agent harness created by Mario Zechner (badlogic, creator of libGDX) and published under MIT by Earendil. Its philosophy is radical minimalism: by default the model gets a small set of tools (read, write, edit, bash), and everything else, from subagents to plan mode, lives in TypeScript extensions. That keeps the loop fast, the context clean, and the behavior fully under your control. It supports 30+ model providers with mid-session switching, session branching and compaction for long tasks, and custom OpenAI-compatible providers via a simple models.json.
Windsurf began as Codeium's AI-first code editor, known for its Cascade agent. Cognition (the company behind Devin) bought it in 2025, and since June 2026 it ships as Devin Desktop, "the next generation of Windsurf": an agent command center with a built-in VS Code-style IDE; windsurf.com now redirects there. Plans are shared with Devin: Free, Pro at $20 a month and Max at $200, each with a usage allowance that refreshes daily and weekly, and extra usage billed at API prices.
Pi runs on Standard Compute
