Cursor vs. Windsurf in 2025

Making an app without coding skills is highly trending right now. But can these tools successfully build and deploy an app? To find an answer to this question, we made this benchmark with the following AI coding tools:

• Cursor
• Replit
• Windsurf Editor by Codeium

API development benchmark results

None of these tools could build a correctly-functioning API from a Swagger API documentation with a single prompt.

We attempted to create the API 2 times with the same Swagger file and prompt:

• First attempt:
  • Windsurf created the API but its API failed our unit tests for some of the endpoints. 10/15 endpoints are working correctly.
  • Cursor failed to create an API.
• Second attempt:
  • Both failed to create a working API.

Replit agent does not support creating an API based on our specifications. Since it did not support Laravel Lumen and Heroku, it suggested an alternative way with the same API functionality. We did not accept the alternative solution to keep the benchmark as fair as possible.

During the API creation process, Cursor and Windsurf initially attempted to use PostgreSQL Hobby Dev for the Heroku deployment. However, this revealed a limitation in their knowledge of current Heroku add-ons, as Hobby Dev is no longer supported. Eventually, both tools managed to correctly identify and configure PostgreSQL Essential 0 tier, which is currently Heroku’s most economical PostgreSQL offering.

This demonstrates how these AI tools can adapt their recommendations, though there might be a delay in their knowledge of platform-specific changes in service offerings.

Both tools offer agentic features, which means they can autonomously perform multiple development tasks. These include writing code, creating file structures, modifying existing code, and generating terminal commands. They can also execute terminal commands and display their outputs directly in their chat interface, making the development process faster.

We did not try to create a UI for this task. If you are interested in screenshot-to-code benchmarks and prompt-to-website benchmarks, you can see our articles.

Methodology

This benchmark uses Cursor’s Composer mode and Windsurf Editor’s Cascade mode, with Claude 3.5 as the LLM.

Prompt: I have a Swagger API Documentation export file (library.json) that defines my API specification. Please help me create a Laravel Lumen Micro REST API based on this specification that will be deployed to Heroku.

We only prompt the tools once with our Swagger file and allow them to use their agentic features. They were expected to build and deploy the app.

Our Swagger file was prepared carefully to cover the whole API without any mistakes.

Please note that we did not make any further prompting to create a working API, since it will harm the objectivity of this task.

Pricing

Monthly pro plan costs of the tools as of January 2025:

To learn the features of these tools, you can read our article about AI coding assistants.

Next steps

We will add more tasks to explore their abilities and limits further.

What are the best practices?

To preserve the objectivity of this benchmark, we did not make further prompting and debugging. In reality, getting better results is possible with prompting to solve problems.

Preparing detailed documentation helps tools to create better apps.

Knowledge of coding, databases, and deployment options helps get better results.

These tools can be used to help developers get the best results.

Key features of AI code editors

AI code editors provide:

• Intelligent code suggestions: Real-time code suggestions based on the context of the code.

• Code completion: Completion of code blocks, functions, and methods.

• Code reviews: Review existing code and provide suggestions for improvement.

• Bug fixes: Detect and fix bugs in the code.

• Syntax highlighting: Syntax highlighting to make the code more readable.

• Integration with existing workflows

FAQ