Freebuff vs Windsurf (now Devin Desktop): a full free day vs a quota they won’t publish
Windsurf became Devin Desktop in June. Its free plan is a "light quota" of unpublished size, and paying users report one question eating a fifth of their week.
In short
- Our verdict: Freebuff. We make Freebuff, so weigh that, but every claim below links to a source you can check.
- Windsurf is now Devin Desktop. Cognition renamed it on June 2, 2026, and replaced the Cascade agent with "Devin Local".
- Its free plan is a quota it does not size. "Light quota to code with agents" and "limited model availability", with daily and weekly caps whose numbers are not published.
- Paying users hit the walls too. On the $200 Max plan, a user reported one question using 20% of their weekly allowance. Windsurf scores 1.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
- Freebuff is free for a full day of work, every day. Unlimited messages in every hour-long session, a published daily allowance with no monthly cap, and models that never touch the allowance at all.
Windsurf had a wild two years: an OpenAI deal that fell through, Google hiring its CEO, Cognition buying the rest, a pricing overhaul in March, and a new name in June. If you just want a coding agent that is free every day and tells you how much you get, Freebuff is the better choice.
At a glance
| Feature | Freebuff | Windsurf / Devin Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | A full day of work, every day | "Light quota", "limited model availability" |
| Published free limits | Yes: up to 30 hours a day in the US | No numbers published |
| How usage is counted | Hour-long sessions with unlimited messages | Daily and weekly quotas per request |
| Weekly cap | None: the allowance refills every day | Yes, on top of the daily quota |
| Paid plans | Not needed for a full day | $20/mo (Pro), $200/mo (Max), extra usage at API prices |
| Where it runs | CLI, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, browser, iOS and Android | Desktop IDE; JetBrains plugin in maintenance mode |
What Windsurf costs now
Per Devin’s pricing page (windsurf.com/pricing now redirects there), Free is a "light quota to code with agents" with limited models, Pro is $20 a month, and Max is $200 a month for "significantly higher quotas". Extra usage on paid plans is billed at API prices.
In March 2026, Windsurf replaced credits with daily and weekly allowances, estimating 7–27 top-tier messages a day on Pro. Its quota docs do not give the sizes, and free users who run out wait for the next daily or weekly reset.
What Freebuff gives you for free
- Unlimited messages in every session. A session lasts an hour, and the agent can read, edit, test and retry as many times as it needs inside it. One big question never eats a fifth of your week.
- A published daily allowance with no monthly cap. Up to 30 hours a day in the US, and 21 in countries such as Canada, the UK and Germany. That is 10 hours a day of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, refilled every day.
- Unmetered models. Solar Mini 4 and Solar Pro 4 never use your allowance. New accounts in the US and other top-tier countries also get DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast without touching it.
- No editor to switch to. The CLI runs next to the editor you already use, and there is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, the web workspace, and apps for iOS and Android.
What Windsurf users are saying
Windsurf’s Trustpilot page scores 1.4 out of 5 from 58 reviews. Recent ones are mostly about the quota:
- One question, a fifth of a week. A Max subscriber in July: "1 question ate up to 20% weekly usage on 200$ plan".
- Limits nobody can see. A reviewer in May said one task exhausted their daily quota after the pricing change: "THEY DO NOT EXPOSE WHAT THE QUOTAS ARE".
- Faster to run out than rivals. On Hacker News, a Pro user said they hit the $20 plan’s limits faster than with Claude Code or Codex, and another saw one prompt use 14% of the daily quota.
- Stops mid-task. A May review says paid models "randomly stop while working in the terminal", and an older GitHub issue reports Cascade errors that still used credits and left half-finished edits.
- Bots instead of support. Reviewers describe billing problems answered only by automated replies, and one deleted their account because they could not reach anyone.
- "Basically dead". In September, a long-time user on Hacker News called Windsurf "basically dead for now after they became Devin" and moved back to VS Code.
What Freebuff users are saying
It has been reliable, useful, and has helped me complete complex technical and development work efficiently.
I’ve fixed more bugs in one day than my other tools fixed in two weeks!
Where Windsurf is strong
Devin Desktop is a full IDE compatible with VS Code, its free plan keeps unlimited Tab completions, and its own SWE models do not count against the quota. If you want an AI editor and do not mind the meter, it is a capable one.
Our verdict
Pick Freebuff. Windsurf has changed owners, names and pricing in about a year, and its free plan is a quota it will not size. Freebuff gives you unlimited messages in every session and a published allowance that refills every day, in the terminal, on every desktop, in the browser and on your phone.
Try Freebuff for free
No card, no API key. `npm install -g freebuff`