Windsurf vs GitHub Copilot 2026: Price per Seat, Credits and Agent Mode

Short answer: for a team, GitHub Copilot is cheaper per seat. Copilot Business costs $19 per user a month, while Windsurf, sold as Devin Desktop since June 2026, charges $40 a month per full seat on Teams. Ten developers pay $2,280 a year on Copilot Business and $4,800 on Devin Teams, our arithmetic on prices read October 26, 2026.

Solo developers see the same gap at the bottom of the ladder: Copilot Pro is $10 a month and Devin Pro is $20. The cheaper bill is not automatically the better buy, though. Devin's seat includes a cloud agent that works on its own and a Tab model that stays unlimited even on the free plan, while Copilot's advantage is that it lives inside the IDE and the GitHub repos your team already uses.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 179 AI coding tools as of October 25, 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan across the 58 that publish a price matches a Copilot Business seat. Copilot Pro sits well below that line and Devin Pro a dollar above it, so neither is an outlier on entry price. The same snapshot lists GitHub Copilot as an alternative to 129 other tools and Devin to 104, so both are products buyers measure everything else against. The old Windsurf record still covers the editor.

Quick verdict

Question	Windsurf (Devin Desktop)	GitHub Copilot
Cheapest paid seat for one developer	Pro, $20/mo	Pro, $10/mo
Team seat	$40/mo per full seat, $80/mo minimum	Business $19/user/mo, Enterprise $39/user/mo
10 developers for a year (our arithmetic)	$4,800	$2,280 on Business, $4,680 on Enterprise
Free plan	Light agent quota, unlimited Tab and inline edits	2,000 completions a month, limited chat and agent use
How usage is metered	Daily and weekly quota, extra usage at API prices	AI credits at $0.01 each, completions not metered on paid plans
Where you work	A standalone editor (the former Windsurf IDE)	VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse, Xcode, CLI, github.com
Agent beyond the editor	Devin Cloud agents on paid plans	Cloud agent that opens a pull request, on Pro and up

Prices were read on Devin's pricing page, Devin's self-serve billing doc, GitHub Copilot plans and GitHub's Copilot plans documentation on October 26, 2026. All prices are monthly; neither vendor prints an annual discount for these plans.

Is Windsurf still called Windsurf?

Not on the invoice. Cognition renamed the Windsurf editor Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026, and its FAQ for the move says it is the same IDE under the Devin brand, with plans and pricing unchanged by the rename. Typing windsurf.com/pricing today lands on Devin's pricing page, which is why the plan names below are Devin's.

The rename also explains why older comparisons quote a lower Pro price of $15 a month. Devin's quota-based usage doc says existing $15 Pro subscribers are grandfathered at that price indefinitely and legacy Teams customers keep $30 per seat, but a new subscriber pays the current rates. If you are buying today, budget the current Pro price, since the old one is not on sale.

For a deeper look at the editor itself, our Windsurf review covers Tab, Cascade and Devin Local, and the Windsurf pricing breakdown explains every quota rule.

What a 10-developer team pays

This is the comparison where Copilot pulls furthest ahead. Copilot Business is a flat per-user price and includes 1,900 AI credits per user, pooled across the organization. Devin Teams bills per full seat, each with a Pro-level quota and Devin Desktop access, and every Teams account has a monthly minimum.

Team size	Devin Teams, full seats	Copilot Business	Copilot Enterprise
2 developers	$80/mo, $960/yr	$38/mo, $456/yr	$78/mo, $936/yr
5 developers	$200/mo, $2,400/yr	$95/mo, $1,140/yr	$195/mo, $2,340/yr
10 developers	$400/mo	$190/mo	$390/mo

Team totals are our arithmetic on the monthly list prices above, times 12 for the year. At ten seats the gap between Devin Teams and Copilot Business is $210 a month, or $2,520 a year. Copilot Enterprise lands just under Devin Teams, so at that tier the decision turns on features and workflow rather than on the invoice.

One caveat on Devin's number. The billing doc spells out that the minimum is a floor: two or more full seats cost the seat count times the per-seat rate, with nothing added. The pricing page phrases the same plan as a team-plan fee plus a fee per full dev seat, which reads like a base charge on top. If your finance team reads it that way, ten seats would be $480 a month; confirm on the checkout screen before you sign.

Devin's flex seats can close part of the gap. A flex seat is free, has no monthly charge and draws from a shared pool of on-demand credits, but it does not include Devin Desktop. A team with four daily users and six occasional ones can pay for four full seats ($160 a month) and fund the rest from credits. Copilot has no equivalent: every user who needs Copilot holds a paid seat, which is still cheaper than a Devin full seat for anyone who codes daily.

Enterprise plans narrow differently. Copilot Enterprise adds 2,000 more credits per user than Business and priority access to new models, and GitHub's docs say it is designed for companies on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. Devin Enterprise has no public price; it adds SAML or OIDC single sign-on, a dedicated deployment option and an account team. New Devin Teams plans do not include SSO at all, which pushes any security-reviewed rollout to a sales call.

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What one developer pays

The individual ladders sit closer together than the team ones, but Copilot is cheaper at every paid rung, and it has one more of them.

Plan level	Devin (Windsurf)	GitHub Copilot
Free	$0, light quota, limited models	$0, 2,000 completions a month, limited chat and agent use
Entry paid	Pro $20/mo, $240/yr	Pro $10/mo, $120/yr
Mid tier	No mid tier	Pro+ $39/mo, $468/yr
Heavy use	Max $200/mo, $2,400/yr	Max $100/mo, $1,200/yr

Yearly figures are our arithmetic at 12 times the monthly price. Pro+ is the rung for a developer who outgrows Pro but does not need Max, a step Devin skips: its ladder goes from Pro to a Max plan at ten times the price, and the pricing page describes Max only as "significantly higher quotas" without a number. A Devin user who needs a bit more than Pro has to buy extra usage or jump a long way.

The free plans favor different habits. Copilot Free caps completions each month, while Devin's Free plan keeps Tab completions and inline edits unlimited and limits only agent work with a light quota. A developer who mostly wants autocomplete and rarely asks an agent for anything can stay on Devin Free far longer, while one who wants to try agent mode inside a JetBrains IDE gets more from Copilot Free. Students have another route on GitHub's side: the free Copilot options include a verified student plan.

How credits and quotas run out

Copilot meters chat and agents in AI credits, and one credit is $0.01. Code completions and next edit suggestions do not use credits on paid plans. GitHub's docs list each plan's monthly allowance as a base plus a flex allotment:

Copilot plan	Base credits	Flex allotment	Total credits a month	Value at $0.01
Pro	1,000	500	1,500	$15
Pro+	3,900	3,100	7,000	$70
Max	10,000	10,000	20,000	$200
Business (per user, pooled)	1,900	Not listed	1,900	Equal to the seat price
Enterprise (per user, pooled)	3,900	Not listed	3,900	Equal to the seat price

On the individual plans, the included credits are worth more than the subscription, which is generous while it lasts: GitHub's plans page says flex allotments may change over time. On Business and Enterprise the credits equal the seat price, but they pool across the organization, so a light user's unspent allowance covers a heavy user's agent sessions. Past the pool, admins choose between a dollar budget for extra credits and pausing Copilot until the next cycle.

Devin meters with a daily and weekly quota that refreshes on its own, and anything beyond it is extra usage bought at API prices for the model you picked. Devin does not print the quota sizes. Its pricing page says most users never hit the limit, and suggests smaller models such as Haiku or Kimi K2.5 to stretch it. Pro also includes free use of SWE-2, Cognition's own model, which is the cheapest way to keep routine edits off the quota.

For a budget owner, Copilot is the more predictable bill. A credit has a fixed dollar value and the allowance per plan is published, so you can forecast spend from a usage export. Devin's quota is easier to live with day to day but harder to forecast, because its size is not published and you only notice it when you reach it. Our GitHub Copilot pricing page covers the credit rules plan by plan.

Agent mode: where each one works

Copilot's agent follows you across editors. GitHub lists agent mode in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse and Xcode, on every plan including Free, with MCP server support and custom instructions. From Pro upward, you can assign an issue to Copilot and it opens a pull request for review, and Business lists access to third-party agents, so tasks can go to agents such as Claude or OpenAI Codex (in preview) from the same seat. The model list on the plans page runs from Claude Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 to GPT-6 Sol and Gemini 3.8 Flash.

Devin's agent comes with its own editor and a cloud twin. Devin Desktop runs Devin Local, a local agent with subagents that shares its architecture with the Devin CLI, next to the older Cascade agent. Paid plans add Devin Cloud, which takes a task and works on it asynchronously, the Teams plan adds sharing and an admin dashboard, and the plan comparison lists integrations with Slack, Linear, Jira, GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket. Frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI are available on Pro.

The trade-off is about where your team already sits. If your developers use JetBrains, Visual Studio or Xcode, Copilot works inside those tools today, while Devin's FAQ says the old Windsurf JetBrains plugin is in maintenance mode and points JetBrains users to Devin over the Agent Client Protocol instead. If your team is happy in a VS Code-style editor and wants a cloud agent that runs without a human in the loop, Devin's seat bundles both. Our best AI coding assistants for JetBrains ranking covers the plugin side in more depth.

Weaknesses to weigh before you buy

Windsurf as Devin Desktop:

• A full seat costs more than double a Copilot Business seat, and Teams has a monthly floor.
• Quota sizes are not published, so heavy use is hard to budget before you hit the cap.
• SSO is Enterprise-only on new plans, and Enterprise has no list price.

GitHub Copilot:

• Copilot Free caps monthly completions, so it works as a trial rather than a daily tool; only the paid plans remove the cap.
• Flex allotments on Pro, Pro+ and Max may change, so the generous credit totals are not guaranteed.
• Copilot Enterprise is designed for organizations on GitHub Enterprise Cloud, which narrows who can buy it.

Which one should your team pick?

Pick GitHub Copilot if the budget decides, if your team is spread across JetBrains, Visual Studio and VS Code, or if your work already runs through GitHub issues and pull requests. At ten seats Business saves $2,520 a year against Devin Teams, and its credits pool across the team. The GitHub Copilot review covers the product in detail, and GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code compares it with a terminal-first agent.

Pick Windsurf, now Devin Desktop, if you want one subscription for an editor agent and an asynchronous cloud agent, if unlimited Tab completions on a free plan matter for occasional coders, or if a mixed team can run most members on free flex seats. Budget a full seat for anyone who codes daily, and ask sales early if SSO is a requirement.

If neither fits, the wider field is in GitHub Copilot alternatives, Cursor vs Windsurf and Cursor vs GitHub Copilot, and AI coding assistant pricing lines up the whole category in one table. Enterprise buyers can start from best AI coding assistants for enterprise.

How we compared

Plan prices, credit allowances and quota rules come from Devin's pricing page, its self-serve billing, quota and Desktop FAQ docs, GitHub's Copilot plans page and GitHub's plans documentation, all read on October 26, 2026. Team and yearly totals are our arithmetic on those monthly list prices. The Toolradar figures come from the live AI coding ranking dated October 25, 2026. Devshot runs no test lab, so this page compares published prices and documented features, not benchmarks; editorial rules are on the Devshot about page.

FAQ

Is Windsurf or GitHub Copilot cheaper for a team?

GitHub Copilot. Copilot Business is $19 per user a month, against $40 per full seat on Devin Teams, the plan that now sells the Windsurf editor. For ten developers that is $190 a month on Copilot and $400 on Devin, per prices read October 26, 2026.

How much does Windsurf cost in 2026?

Windsurf is now sold as Devin Desktop: Free is $0, Pro is $20 a month and Max is $200 a month. Teams costs $40 a month per full seat with an $80 monthly minimum, and Enterprise is priced by quote. Older posts quoting $15 for Pro describe the grandfathered price that only existing subscribers keep.

How much does GitHub Copilot cost in 2026?

Copilot Free is $0, Pro is $10 a month, Pro+ is $39 and Max is $100 for individuals. Organizations pay $19 per user a month on Business and $39 per user on Enterprise. Each plan includes AI credits for chat and agents, valued at $0.01 per credit.

Does Windsurf work in JetBrains like Copilot does?

Not in the same way. Copilot runs as a plugin inside JetBrains IDEs with agent mode included. Devin's FAQ says the old Windsurf JetBrains plugin is in maintenance mode and recommends running Devin inside JetBrains through the Agent Client Protocol instead.

Which free plan is better, Windsurf or Copilot?

It depends on what you use most. Devin's Free plan keeps Tab completions and inline edits unlimited and limits only agent work, while Copilot Free caps completions at 2,000 a month but includes agent mode in the IDE and the CLI. Autocomplete-heavy developers last longer on Devin Free.

What happens when you run out of credits or quota?

On Copilot, paid users can set a dollar budget for extra credits at $0.01 each, and on Business and Enterprise admins decide whether extra usage is allowed or Copilot pauses until the next cycle. On Devin, paid plans buy extra usage at API prices for the chosen model, while Free users wait for the daily or weekly reset.

Cite this: Devshot, "Windsurf vs GitHub Copilot 2026: Price per Seat, Credits and Agent Mode", November 2026.

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