Windsurf vs GitHub Copilot: What You Actually Pay

The advertised prices are bullshit. Your real costs depend on how much you actually use these things, and both tools are designed to make you use more than you think.

Windsurf's Credit Trap

Windsurf's pricing page makes credits sound reasonable until you're watching that counter drop every time you ask a question.

How credits actually work:

• Autocomplete is free (only good thing)
• Basic questions eat 1-2 credits
• Any complex work burns 10-30 credits per session
• Multi-file refactoring costs a shitload

25 credits last maybe 2-3 days, sometimes less if you hit weird bugs. The $15/month Pro plan gives you 500 credits, but that's assuming you're not working on anything difficult.

Where credits disappear fast:

• Debugging TypeScript errors (spent like 35-40 credits last week on "Type 'string | undefined' is not assignable to type 'never'" which turned out to be missing optional chaining on user.profile?.avatar)
• Refactoring legacy code (tried cleaning up our jQuery auth mess, burned probably 50-60 credits before giving up)
• Learning new frameworks (React hooks useEffect dependency warnings ate through maybe 30 credits one afternoon)
• Multi-file changes (renamed a prop across our UserProfile components, each file cost 2-3 credits even for simple find/replace)

Had this weird Docker memory issue where containers kept dying. Spent forever thinking it was a memory leak in our Node app. Windsurf kept suggesting profiling tools and memory dump analysis when I just had the limit set to 512MB and needed like 1GB. Cost me a bunch of credits for what ended up being obvious.

The anxiety is real: You start rationing AI help because you're worried about running out of credits. I literally stopped asking for help refactoring because I was watching the credit counter. Instead of just fixing the problem, you're doing math about whether it's worth asking for help.

GitHub Copilot's "Unlimited" Lies

GitHub Copilot's plans look simple: $10/month, unlimited features. Then you hit the premium request limits.

You get 300 premium requests per month. Everything useful counts as premium:

• Explaining complex code
• Multi-file refactoring
• Using better AI models
• Actually debugging shit

When you hit the limits:

• Learning new frameworks burns through requests fast
• Debugging production issues eats them up
• Any serious refactoring work goes over
• Legacy code cleanup destroys your monthly allowance

Overages cost $0.04 per request. Doesn't sound bad until you get a $43 surprise bill because you spent a weekend debugging why our payment form worked in Chrome but broke in Safari 16.1. Turned out document.getElementById was returning null because the DOM wasn't fully loaded when the script ran. Needed to wrap it in DOMContentLoaded event listener.

The Pro+ trap: $39/month removes the premium limits, but now you're paying almost 4x the advertised price. Most people either upgrade or start rationing the good features.

Team Costs Get Weird

GitHub Copilot Business ($19/user): Everyone gets their own 300 premium request limit. Senior developers hit overages every month while junior developers barely touch theirs. Can't share limits, which is stupid.

Windsurf Teams ($30/user): Credits are shared across the team. Makes more sense but costs more upfront. At least you can see who's burning through credits.

Both have deployment headaches. GitHub integrates better with existing VS Code setups. Windsurf requires more onboarding but the AI is usually better for complex work.

What Nobody Tells You

Learning curve: Took me like a week to figure out Windsurf's credit system - kept second-guessing whether asking about regex patterns would cost 1 credit or 5. GitHub's VS Code extension just worked but I learned about premium request limits the hard way with a $34 overage bill.

The monitoring bullshit: You spend more time watching usage dashboards than actually coding. GitHub shows you're at 287/300 premium requests on day 20 of the month. Windsurf shows you burning 2.3 credits per hour and you start doing math about whether you can afford to debug that webpack configuration issue.

Bottom Line

Your real costs are always higher than what they advertise. Both tools have hidden friction that makes you spend more money or use fewer features.

GitHub is more predictable if you can live within the limits. Windsurf is pay-as-you-go anxiety but sometimes the AI is worth it.

Neither pricing model is great, but both tools save enough time to be worth the cost if you actually code for a living.

Both pricing models are designed to extract more money from you than their marketing suggests. Here's how they actually work in practice.

GitHub Copilot: The "Predictable" Option

$10/month sounds simple until you learn about premium requests. You get 300 per month, then pay $0.04 per request after that.

What eats premium requests:

• Explaining complex legacy code
• Multi-file refactoring
• Using better AI models instead of basic autocomplete
• Code reviews on anything non-trivial

You'll hit the 300 limit if you actually use the advanced features. Then you either pay overages or ration AI help for the rest of the month.

The $39/month Pro+ tier removes premium limits, but now you're paying 4x the advertised price.

Windsurf: The Credit Anxiety Experience

Pay-as-you-go sounds fair until you're doing mental math instead of coding.

25 free credits disappear in like 2-3 days of real work, maybe less if you hit weird bugs. The $15/month Pro plan gives you 500 credits, which sounds like a lot until you're debugging something complex.

Credit consumption:

• Simple autocomplete: Free (only thing they don't charge for)
• Explaining code: 1-2 credits each (reasonable until you need 15+ explanations)
• Refactoring: 5-15 credits per session (extracting a custom hook cost me like 18 credits for something I probably could've done manually in 15 minutes)
• Complex debugging: 20-40 credits because you end up asking the same "why is this undefined?" question in different ways

You start rationing AI help because you're worried about running out. It's like having a data cap on your problem-solving tools.

Team Deployment Headaches

GitHub Business ($19/user): Each person gets their own 300 premium request limit. Senior devs hit overages every month, juniors use maybe 30 requests. Can't share limits which seems dumb.

Windsurf Teams ($30/user): Credits are pooled across the team. Makes more sense but costs more upfront. People get weird about "wasting" credits. Had one teammate ask in Slack if it was okay to use AI help for a regex pattern because he didn't want to burn team credits.

Both have onboarding friction. GitHub integrates better with existing VS Code setups. Windsurf requires more learning but the AI is often better for complex problems.

Which One to Pick

GitHub Copilot if you want predictable costs and can live within the premium request limits. $10/month is straightforward, integrates with everything you already use.

Windsurf if you're okay with credit anxiety for potentially better AI. Pay-as-you-go can be cheaper for light usage, more expensive for heavy usage.

For teams: GitHub is easier to deploy. Windsurf makes more sense for shared costs but requires more onboarding.

The Real Truth

Both pricing models mess with your head. GitHub uses artificial limits to push you toward higher tiers. Windsurf turns every debugging session into a cost-benefit analysis.

But honestly? Both tools save more time than they cost. Windsurf helped me refactor our API error handling in like 2 hours last week - probably would've taken me most of a day doing it manually. GitHub's autocomplete is good enough that I feel weird coding without it.

Pick one and stop overthinking it. The productivity gains are worth the pricing bullshit, even if the vendors are lying about the real costs.