Tabby vs Windsurf

Tabby and Windsurf are both coding assistants tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

Tabby

Open-source, self-hosted AI coding assistant with code completion, chat, and agentic automation.

Windsurf

Windsurf is a code editor that integrates Claude AI (via Codeium's API) to handle multi-file edits, debugging, and architectural decisions in a single continuous session. It competes directly with Cursor by offering similar agentic coding capabilities—letting the AI propose changes across your project rather than just completing one line at a time. The free tier includes limited monthly tokens; paid plans start around $10/month. The main friction point is rate limiting on the free tier, which can interrupt workflow for heavy users, and the closed pricing model makes it hard to predict enterprise costs.

Attribute	Tabby	Windsurf
Pricing	Free	Paid
Price	—	$20/month
Free trial	No	No
Open source	No	No
Has API	Yes	Yes
Self-hosted option	Yes	No
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows (via Docker); Cloud IDEs; AWS, GCP, Azure	Web, API
Languages	All (language-agnostic; supports any language supported by underlying LLM)	95+ languages
Released	2023	2024-03
Pros	Fully open-source and self-hosted with no vendor lock-in No external databases or cloud services required Agentic multi-step task automation with Pochi agent Support for multiple popular IDEs and code editors End-to-end stack optimization for fast completions under 1 second	Scalable pricing Highly customizable User-friendly interface
Cons	Requires infrastructure management and GPU resources for optimal performance Agent (Pochi) is in private preview, not fully released to general availability Steeper setup complexity compared to cloud-based alternatives	Limited free tier Moderate API rate limits

Bottom line

Tabby is free while Windsurf is paid. Choose based on which difference matters most for your workflow.

Comparison data is sourced and verified by the AIDiveForge data pipeline. AIDiveForge is editorially independent.