Aider
Terminal-native pair programmer that edits your git repo.
Full Aider record →Head to head
Aider vs Windsurf
Aider (Aider) and Windsurf (Cognition) both sit in Coding. Aider is the cheaper entry point at Open source, model costs only. Windsurf shipped more tracked changes in the last 30 days (14 vs 0). Every value below comes from the latest crawl of the vendors' own pages.
| Attribute | Aider Aider | Windsurf Cognition |
|---|---|---|
| Segment | Coding | Coding |
| Version | 0.8x | 3.12.28 |
| Entry cost | Open source, model costs only | Free tier · from $20/mo |
| Pricing tiers | — | Free free · Pro $20 · Max $200 · Teams $120 |
| Model stack | Claude Sonnet · DeepSeek V3 · GPT-5 | Cascade · Claude · Claude Fable 5.1 · Claude Sonnet 4.5 · Devin · Devin Local · Fast · Fusion · Gemini · GPT · GPT 5.2 Mini · GPT-5.2 · GPT-5.6 · GPT-6 Astra · Haiku · Kimi K2.5 · OpenAI frontier models · SWE 1.7 · SWE-1.5 · SWE-2 · Ultra |
| Context window | — | Varies by model |
| Public API | ||
| Routes models | ||
| Changes / 30d | 0 | 14 |
| Origin | Global | Global |
| Capabilities | Repo map, Git commits, Voice input | Cascade agent, Supercomplete, Live previews, Memories, Deploys, Devin Local Agent, Devin Cloud Agent, Cascade Agent |
Windsurf
An IDE whose Cascade agent tracks your actions and edits across the codebase.
Full Windsurf record →