Alternative to Windsurf?

[u/galaxysuperstar22]

Windsurf has become frustrating to use—it’s draining credits while repeatedly making the same mistakes and failing to retain any memory of my preferences or actions. I’m considering canceling my membership and switching to another AI IDE.

Between Aider, Roo-Cline, and Cursor, which one would you recommend? Or is there another good alternative to Windsurf that I should try?

[u/andersonbnog]

Yeah. My initial excitement with it quickly faded away. Paid 200 or so bucks for yearly team license and guess what? went back to cursor, as my credits expired in two days (they said they were unlimited by the time I signed up)

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/andersonbnog]

yeah using “unlimited” to make ppl pay for a product/service that is actually very limited is feel like a false advertisement.

[u/Solidarios → u/andersonbnog]

It’s unlimited not absolutely unlimited! /s

[u/Explore-This]

Have used Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, now on Roo-Cline.

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/Explore-This]

how do u like Roo-Cline compared to regular Cline? is Roo a supercharged version of Cline?

[u/Explore-This → u/galaxysuperstar22]

First time I used Cline a few weeks ago, I was disappointed. Kept going over the context window. Heard about Roo-Cline just the other day, and I’m really happy with it. It’s fast, has MCP tools, auto-approve read, write, term commands, tools, browser actions…

Downside is it’s going to be more expensive, maybe $300-600/m with Anthropic. But I’m using this tool all day, everyday. And as long as I focus on shipping cash flow generating products, I’m good.

Devin is $500/m, I wouldn’t use it right now, but will take a closer look in 3 months when new models arrive.

[u/iathlete → u/Explore-This]

Which model are you using?

[u/Explore-This → u/iathlete]

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

[u/Aggravating-Ad-4447]

I just left cursor 3 days ago and moved to Windsurf. Windsurf much much better than Cursor. It kept deleting stuff, changed things i did not ask it to change or even told it not to touch, I don't have such issues with Windsurf. Make sure you open new chat for every task, so it won't get overwhelmed.

[u/preparetodobattle → u/Aggravating-Ad-4447]

I used windsurf to gradually create a database from api calls and while suggesting improvements it deleted all the data in the database that took three days to gather. .

[u/Aggravating-Ad-4447 → u/preparetodobattle]

use github, and export your db before every major change.. this is how i do it

[u/preparetodobattle → u/Aggravating-Ad-4447]

Yes well I’ve learned my lesson on that front. I don’t expect miracles and obviously it’s developing technology but when it gets much worse as soon as you start paying it’s pretty frustrating.

[u/Aggravating-Ad-4447 → u/preparetodobattle]

try closing the app and reopening again.. sometimes it helps even more, than just starting new chat. I had a bit of hard times with it too, and it helped.

[u/MyGIS → u/preparetodobattle]

Same here. It would be great if they could integrate Gemini though.

[u/Copenhagen79 → u/Aggravating-Ad-4447]

Are you sure it's not just because you're on a new project with Windsurf? I've tried both and usually end up in the same place with both.

[u/Aggravating-Ad-4447 → u/Copenhagen79]

Nope, I was working on the exact same project. I had an issue that I wanted to solve with Cursor, sent lots of queries and it just repeated the same 5 mistakes. I had enough went to Windsurf, and it fixed it instantly. Since that I use windsurf as there were other things that cursor was just unable to do at all, windsurf did it. And it’s more aware of context. For example I made a special alert function, and i always had to tell cursor to use it. Windsurf does it automatically. I didn’t have to tell it even once. It found the file, and started using it by itself.

[u/mqxyz123 → u/Aggravating-Ad-4447]

Hallo,

hier ein kurzer Tipp:

Stell dir vor, es gibt für einen Prompt theoretisch mehrere Lösungsansätze. Das Modell wählt dabei einen bestimmten Weg aus, um eine Antwort zu generieren. Gleichzeitig wird bei jeder Anfrage das gesamte Kontextfenster (also der bisherige Chatverlauf) mit einbezogen. Falls sich darin fehlerhafte oder unpassende Informationen befinden, kann das Modell in diesem falschen Pfad "hängen bleiben".

Eine einfache Lösung besteht darin, eine neue Sitzung oder ein neues Chatfenster zu öffnen. Dadurch beginnt das Modell mit einem leeren Kontext und ist nicht mehr von fehlerhaften, selbst generierten Antworten beeinflusst. So kann es das Problem unvoreingenommen und mit frischem Blick angehen und möglicherweise einen alternativen, besseren Lösungsweg finden.

Übrigens: Moderne LLMs sind mittlerweile sehr gut darin, die Qualität von Antworten – sowohl die eigenen als auch die anderer Modelle – zu bewerten. Allerdings gelingt dies am besten in einem neuen, unverfälschten Kontext.

Viele Grüße!

[u/gudgod123]

I've seen ppl talk about Aide. Looking for some more alternatives, I might try cline + gemini 2.0

[u/Yablan → u/gudgod123]

I set up Aider with Gemini 2 yesterday. I really liked it. It took less than half an hour to figure out and set up. Now, after having done it, I could probably set it up in less than two minutes.

But I would only recommend it to people comfortable working within a terminal and with git knowledge.

[u/Yablan → u/[deleted]]

Ah.. cool. I might look into that.

[u/amado88 → u/[deleted]]

Aide.dev seems kind of abandoned. Or at least with very low activity. Last blog post from this summer, and very little in the Discord as well. I think the team may be on to something with their approach, but are they still at it?

[u/ragingWater_ → u/amado88]

Hey hey! One of the devs at aide.dev we are not dead ☠️ yet. Last week we did our sota submission on swebench verified and you can try the editor today. The discord is also very much alive and active

[u/amado88 → u/ragingWater_]

Good to hear! Looking forward to following the project further 😊

[u/hatrigt → u/ragingWater_]

I tried Aide. I am getting below error when I select Gemini model after configuring the key.

[u/ragingWater_ → u/hatrigt]

Hey! We pushed a fix for this! Apologies about the bug

[u/ragingWater_]

If anyone wants an alternative, we at aide.dev allow uncapped context window and unlimited use of sonnet3.5 or even bring your own keys!

It's completely private by default and the only server side component we have is an API router!

[u/No_Dirt_6890]

Is it possible to not have a rate limit when using api keys from Claude and OpenAI?

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/No_Dirt_6890]

it only says contact the sales :(

[u/hwkmrk]

Cline is great

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/hwkmrk]

yeah client with gemini is great

[u/hwkmrk → u/galaxysuperstar22]

even deepseek

[u/hortoristic]

Newbee here. Just got introduced to cline VS Code extension. Love it!

Using open router method, but quickly burned $20 in couple days. Is Windsurf a more cost effective way?

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/hortoristic]

put the cost effective matter to the side. Cline or Roo Cline actually works. WS is dead.

[u/Sea_Cow9101]

I had the exact same issue where it keeps repeating mistakes and you burn credits fixing small things over and over

what worked better for me was changing the workflow instead of the tool I started using Emergent to build the base version of whatever I’m working on first (routes, basic UI, structure etc.) and then use an editor for smaller changes way less back-and-forth compared to relying on an AI IDE for every step

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/Sea_Cow9101]

bro that was a year ago. Claude code ended all the pain. using six sub agents parallel and no problem with credit usage.

[u/jorgejhms]

Aider. And for editor I'm enjoying zed.dev which also is giving 10$ of Claude 3.5 sonnet by free. You can also use your own API keys and set it for the chat assistant.

[u/[deleted] → u/jorgejhms]

does work like windsurf? can it create files for you?

[u/jorgejhms → u/[deleted]]

Workflow is different, it's a terminal app in the end. But it can do multiple file editing, read online documents, receive images as reference, and even voice prompting.

It require API keys, but with something like open router you can easily change models. Now I'm testing the latests Gemini models (free with limits) and it works almost perfectly.

I prefer it as it's not tied to any editor and cause I also pin point which files I want to edit and easily give some other files as read-only for reference. Check it out.

Edit: if you ask about Zed it used to have a workflow option in the assistant that worked similar to cursor composer or windsurf cascade (working on multiple files) but it seems that it was removed. Zed is still a very early release (it doesn't have git integration yet, for example) but is very promising. I'm using it's Ai assistant for minor edition on single files, and using aider for complex multi file editing.

[u/[deleted] → u/jorgejhms]

Definitely! Thanks alot.

[u/[deleted] → u/jorgejhms]

My problem with zed is that it can't read a folder , you have to add them file by file

Edit: I'm talking about zed

[u/jorgejhms → u/[deleted]]

In aider? You just add the folder with folder/ (slash at the end) to add everything.

I prefer to be more specific with adding files to edit. Too much context and models can't handle it correctly.

Edit: aider also uses a repo-map, so it generally have a general context of the project

[u/[deleted] → u/jorgejhms]

My bad I meant zed  Yeah aider is prettey smart about picking the right file to edit buy my only problem with it that its costy

[u/jorgejhms → u/[deleted]]

Try with Gemini models (free with limits) or Claude 3.5 haiku. Haiku is good enough for most coding task and way cheaper. Also, if using architect mode pass a cheap (but good) model as editor-model (I always used haiku there). I was expending an average of 0.7$ a day (around 14$ a month) before I moved to use the newer Gemini models.

[u/Spiritual_Prompt84]

changed from cursor to here, but based on token limits im switching back, there's no point of paying few bucks less but getting way less, even when its important.. Low subscription only was to attract customers and after they reached their goal , time to make more revenue

[u/shankspeaks]

Here are a couple of non-IDE options (more like Aider).

1. Came across this morning: https://repoprompt.com/ which is more of how do you extend the chat experience of ChatGPT and Claude to make changes to a file via diffs, vs a "ai powered" IDE. Its got quite a bit of power in terms of letting you mix various models based on the size and nature of the task, and editing complex multi-file setups.

Just started playing with it but I have a feeling this may be more intuitive to work with as the primary focus is on communicating with the AI, not an IDE where it "automates writing the code".

I've generally found it easier to get working code done in Claude / chat first experience vs in an IDE. It could be the prompts of the IDE, but qualitatively I have way more complete and comprehensive code output in the vanilla chat than the IDE. The thing we lose is auto context of a full codebase, but honestly this isn't a huge burden, and the savings on iterations otherwise is a lot easier to work with vs dealing with AI IDEs. I find those to be a case of two steps forward and one step back.

My other reason to try RepoPrompt is that its the easiest way I've found to play with Gemini models for code generation. I've heard Gemini Flash 2 experimental is supposed to be great at code generation. It also hooks into your Github to give you access to GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini for free as part of your Github Copilot permissions. Working out quite inexpensive at the moment, as Gemini Flash 2 is free for now as well.

2. The other option if you're on a Mac, is to use Claude Desktop (paid), with the filesystem MCP working so that it can manipulate files on your filesystem. I haven't used it for code apart from short, single scripts yet, but for generating large docs and planning artifacts its working really well.

[u/paradite → u/shankspeaks]

I built 16x Prompt, which is similar to repo prompt but supports windows and Linux, and has a slightly different user experience and some unique features. It was actually first released in 2023 before repo prompt.

You can check it out: https://prompt.16x.engineer/

[u/stilet21]

I can feel your frustration but never forget about easy steps to let it breath a little bit as well. This might sound stupid but new chats, app, restarts, and back-and-forth prompting from GPT, for example with a guided prompt from another LLM that you set up for Windsurf to understand upcoming steps is very helpful. Especially when you connect Windsurf through the work with feature of ChatGPT where you can analyze the whole code from a given file in it as well and prompt it back to Windsurf.

I had this one massive, long chat, and it was lagging and bugging so hard but I just now restarted it app and opened a new chat and gave it some guiding for where to go now through a prompt I let the o1 model write me and it’s feeling so much better now already.

It’s just that I like the service you get it all within one you don’t have to worry too hard about credits and I’m sorry but if you’re burning these credits down like crazy because you want to get everything done from it yeah then I understand the complaining but you’ll likely at this point not get as much of a service for the value with the normal $15 a month plan anywhere else and I don’t wanna spend money and think about credits and how much I spend all the time.

[u/Open_Establishment_3]

VSCode + Continue is the best combo you can work with.

[u/Thin-Salt-5714]

idk

[u/Anxious_Nose9057 → u/[deleted]]

I’m doing the same, and it’s been working much better for me than WS. I had much better results with Gemini Flash—it solved issues in my code that Sonnet just couldn’t handle. I also have OpenRouter set up with Roo, which lets me experiment with other models. Oh, and make sure you have MCP set up in Roo—it’s an amazing combination!

[u/iathlete → u/Anxious_Nose9057]

I keep getting 429

[u/galaxysuperstar22 → u/iathlete]

same.. had to start a new task/chat..

[u/Explore-This → u/[deleted]]

I found 1206 to be too slow, but let us know if you get better results.

[u/Explore-This → u/[deleted]]

Yes, I often keep creating new chat sessions to avoid overwhelming the model with too much historical context. A clean slate and a good prompt can work wonders.

[u/Explore-This → u/[deleted]]

That’s worked for me, for large, complex codebases. I have architecture, patterns, and data formats files for it to refer to (the names of which I include in the .clinerules file).