JetBrains Air vs Windsurf (2026)

JetBrains Air

by JetBrains

Windsurf

by Cognition

Pros

• ✓Runs several coding agents in parallel inside JetBrains IDEs, including Junie, Codex, Claude Agent, GitHub Copilot and any ACP-compatible agent, with no lock-in to one vendor.
• ✓Agents get the IDE's code intelligence and built-in tools, and every change opens as an IDE diff that can be reviewed and commented on line by line.
• ✓Air Governance Basic is free for JetBrains business customers and adds centralized billing, spending limits, SSO and AI analytics across agents and providers.

Limitations

• –Air in IDEs and Air Teams are both in early access, mobile access is listed as coming soon, and cloud runs are still rolling out to remaining customers.
• –Cloud runs currently require a JetBrains AI subscription, and usage beyond the free Junie Lite runs is paid in AI credits or through the developer's own provider keys.
• –Model and agent controls, centralized MCP management and managed provider keys need Air Governance Business at $20 per seat per month, and audit logs and SCIM need Enterprise.

Pros

• ✓Bundles interactive IDE coding with asynchronous cloud agents under one subscription, so a developer can keep editing locally while delegating longer tasks to Devin Cloud sessions and reviewing the results in the same surface.
• ✓MCP works in both directions. Devin Desktop connects out to external MCP servers such as the Slack MCP Server, and Cognition publishes its own MCP server with documented setup instructions for streamable HTTP clients.
• ✓Pricing is public and self-serve up to the Teams tier, with a permanently free plan and a documented usage-quota model, so a team can evaluate and adopt the product without talking to sales.
• ✓Devin Desktop is FedRAMP High authorized and meets DoD IL4, IL5 and IL6 through Palantir FedStart, with ITAR and FIPS 140-2 and 140-3 coverage on the same scope.

Limitations

• –SAML and OIDC single sign-on, virtual private cloud deployment, teamspace isolation and centralized admin controls are all Enterprise-tier items, so the $20 Pro plan carries none of them and concurrent sessions are capped at ten.
• –Customer data may be used for model training by default under Cognition's platform terms, and the contractual opt-out is restricted to paid tiers, so free-plan users have no opt-out at all. On the Teams tier only an administrator can exercise it.
• –Cognition publishes no autonomous task-completion rate on any surface, so the product's autonomy rests on its own product descriptions and customer quotes rather than a measured rate. FedRAMP High and the DoD impact levels cover Devin Desktop today, while the Devin Cloud agents are slated for the second half of 2026.