JetBrains AI Assistant vs Windsurf (2026)

JetBrains AI Assistant

by JetBrains

Windsurf

by Cognition

Pros

• ✓Built into eleven JetBrains IDEs plus Android Studio and ReSharper, with code completion from JetBrains' own Mellum model that does not use AI Credits, and a public preview extension for Visual Studio Code.
• ✓Several coding agents in one chat: JetBrains' own Junie, plus Claude Agent, Codex and GitHub Copilot, and any ACP-compatible agent from the registry, with MCP support in both directions.
• ✓Cloud models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI through JetBrains AI, bring-your-own-key for OpenAI and Anthropic, and local models through Ollama or LM Studio.

Limitations

• ⚠AI Free is not available in IntelliJ IDEA without an Ultimate subscription, PyCharm without a Pro subscription, or Android Studio, and it does not include next edit suggestions.
• ⚠Cloud AI features pause when the included credits run out until the quota renews after 30 days or credits are topped up, and unused included credits do not roll over.
• ⚠SSO and SCIM, AI audit logs, organization-wide provider keys and on-premises deployment require AI Enterprise at $60 per user per month billed annually, sold through a demo request.

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, which is rare in this category. 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 customer outcome figures against anonymized categories such as Financial Institution or Technology Company rather than named accounts, and publishes no autonomous task-completion rate on any surface. FedRAMP High and the DoD impact levels cover Devin Desktop today, while the Devin Cloud agents are slated for the second half of 2026.