Cursor vs Windsurf vs Copilot: compare one real coding task

Start here

A coding demo ends when the generated code appears. Your job continues through review, tests and maintenance. Give each candidate the same bounded task in a repository you understand, then count the work needed to accept the change. This is an evaluation method, not a claim that we have benchmarked the current releases.

Check the current product first

Cursor documents its agent tooling, GitHub describes its cloud agent, and the Windsurf Cascade documentation now redirects to Devin Desktop's Cascade pages. Product naming, available modes and plans change. Check the current official docs for the exact tool you are evaluating.

Choose a bounded repository task

Our suggested comparison task has an observable bug, a small intended change and an existing check that can prove the result. Use the same starting commit and task description. Do not include private code in a service unless your project permits it.

Measure review effort

Record whether the tool found relevant files, made an appropriate change and ran the required checks. Count your corrections and the time spent reviewing the diff. A polished final message is not evidence that a command passed.

• Did the tool preserve unrelated behavior?
• Did it explain a failure accurately?
• Did its tests exercise the requested behavior?
• Could a teammate understand the resulting diff?

Try the workflow more than once

Repeat with a documentation task or a small feature after the initial bug fix. A tool can be strong at one type of work and awkward at another. This page replaces unsupported autocomplete-latency and model-ranking claims with a reproducible evaluation method.

Try this next

Keep the decision useful: record the task, evidence and reason for your choice in a short decision note. Read A simple Notion system for decisions that stay findable.