Bolt.new vs Windsurf
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Bolt.new if you want prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Windsurf if you want agentic ai ide whose cascade agent edits across your codebase (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Bolt.new | Windsurf | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser | Agentic AI IDE whose Cascade agent edits across your codebase |
| Type | agent | agent |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (1M tokens/mo); Pro from $25/mo | freemium · Free tier; Pro $20/mo |
| Best for | consumers, developers, smb | developers, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas | saas |
| Modalities | text, code | text, code |
| Models | claude, model-agnostic | claude, proprietary, model-agnostic |
| Protocols | rest-api | mcp, function-calling |
| Integrations | Netlify, Supabase, GitHub, Expo | GitHub, MCP servers, VS Code extensions ecosystem, Devin |
| Capabilities | 3 documented | 3 documented |
Bolt.new
- +Full dev environment runs in the browser via WebContainers, with the AI controlling filesystem, terminal, and server
- +Generates true full-stack apps (not just UI) and can deploy via Bolt Cloud
- +No local setup; fast for prototyping and iterating by chatting
- -Token-based usage cost can rise quickly on complex or long-running builds
- -Output needs human review and iteration; it is not a hands-off autonomous engineer
Windsurf
- +Cascade does genuine multi-step, multi-file agentic work inside a familiar VS Code-style editor
- +Ships a fast in-house coding model (SWE-1.5) and can also run frontier models like Claude
- +After the Cognition acquisition, integrates Devin as a cloud agent for delegated tasks
- -Quota and credit changes after the acquisition have shifted what each tier includes
- -Multi-step agent runs still need human review; not a hands-off autonomous engineer
Which should you choose?
Bolt.new is prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser, best for consumers, developers, smb. Windsurf is agentic ai ide whose cascade agent edits across your codebase, best for developers, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.