Let's Address the elephant in the room, before people start leaving in droves, becasue the truth is windsurf is a good product. But the pricing model needs a serious and overdue update | Voters

Let's Address the elephant in the room, before people start leaving in droves, becasue the truth is windsurf is a good product. But the pricing model needs a serious and overdue update

Luke Sidney

Now, models are pulling context, using memory, using MCP, using global rules, solving lint errors... especially if you're coding typescript, you're absolutely cooked... i used 250 premium flow action credits in one day with 48 prompts. at this rate, ill have to buy 10$ credit add-ons every 7 days & it makes no sense at all! I get their business and pricing model, but it needs a serious update. we need 2500 credits on the pro plan at the very least for the same price to last a full month and get what we paid for... Assuming we are coding 8hrs a day. We also need to fix these models so they run less excessive loops in case they are not providing the correct answer. claude 3.7 can literally spend 20 flow actions doing the opposite of what i asked. this is very stress inducing and quite frustrating honnestly... 
This was always a thing, but with how complex the system has become now, with all the newer fetures, the models just blow through your usage... it's not nearly enough. when windsurf first came out, it was fine becasue, there were not as many tools, to use this many flow credits. But now it has made the app legit unusable, because my 15$ now lasts 15 days, its been two months in a row now. And we can either choose from the pro plan or the pro ultimate plan, which is a 50 dollars jump, and im pretty sure i could blow past 3000 flex credits without trying right now to be honnest, at least thats what using windsurf has been feeling like in the last 60 days give or take.
-> I would give 1000 flex credits for 10$. 500 flow actions can easily be gone within a day or two, especially now, this add-on makes no sense at all...
-> we need to either give more to the pro plan or make an entirely new tier in the middle like "wind-breaker Plan" that gives like 2500 credits and 1000 prompts for 25$ and 20$ for early birds. and 3000 flow actions for 60$ is ludacrous they should get between 4500 and 6000 for this much. its a vs code fork i believe, so its not like the app is super fast or anything and we are paying for that... we are strictly paying for advanced AI structures  within a vs-like environment, so please make it right on that end and deliver on the only promise you made.
-> Someone suggested to use cascade base model to pull context from files and pull from memory so the chosen model is only used for extensive work like MCP, problem solving and input/output. Maybe that would help with the whole problem.
Right now windsurf is coming to a point where its unusable now and very stressful to use, because every single prompt im checking "How many flow actions has this used?". I am all for businesses generating revenue, but this pricing model needs to be addressed. This is a problem linked directly to the product value and fucntionality and its efficiency/value per price. this can quickly get out of control and make people leave in droves. which seems like its already starting. And frankly, i'm next. i don't want to be, because i have been here since the start and i genuinely liked the product at first. it was very good.
If usage at the very least, isn't addressed by the team within the next month they probably won't do anything about it, so i'll leave for better options. there are at least 3 other options on par with windsurf if not better right now. cursor, vs code with cline, copilot etc, its a competitive market so i won't have trouble finding a new tool/extension.
The waves updates are great, but if you're not addressing the elephant in the room, people will just leave, as right now it seems like, if you are just a regular developper with the usual tech stack and workload, you are paying a MONTHLY subscription for about 10-15 days of LOCKED usage. this is so bad this can really kill the product if most people can't use it past 15 days you know...

March 17, 2025

Sam das

More credits are needed. But I think if they can implement a router to route easy tasks to cheaper models and complex tasks to the flagship ones it will optimize credit usage. This will also ease cognitive load on the user and let the user focus on code review, strategy and guidance to the windsurf agent. Currently my credits are over and will reset in 2 weeks. Till then I will use roo-code. If they fail to find a solution to this problem. I will permanently switch to roo-code or something else as models are getting cheaper and better by the day.

CT-jO3W6k6O

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, I'm not sure if it's feasible for them to do it given the added cost they have to pay for AI credits to the providers. I've switched over to Cline instead, not because it's cheaper (I'm burning through $40 per day), but because it's not over-optimised to reduce credit usage so it maintains context and app understanding better - saving time in the long-run, and giving me less stress. It still works out cheaper than a developer.

But the point is, the cost of AI at this level of usage is high, and it's not necessarily something Codeium can give away for free.

Johan Garrido

Your comment makes a lot of sense, even when the plan runs out, buying additional is very expensive.

Mike Stromme

This 20 million percent!!! Stay away from Typescript AND 3.7. I burned through 6 chats and 44 flow credits trying to add a frickin delete button to a card in React.

Erv Walter

I think the problem is that the best models are expensive (and that's not a WIndsurf problem, it's an Anthropic/OpenAI/Google problem). I have used alternatives like Cline and Roo Code where you provide your own API key and just pay for what you use. If you do that, you'll spend more in a few days than your entire monthly subscription for Windsurf.

I don't know how WIndsurf makes this cheaper without going out of business (they have to pay Anthropic for the tokens WIndsurf uses) without Anthropic or someone else coming up with a compelling coding model that actually costs 10x less.

Olalekan Raheem

Windsurf is the best, but I can't use it because of the pricing model. As long as something like flow credit exists, it will likely be unusable. Some of us are really long coders. And paying dollars from a country that the dollar rate of exchange is super high, I will have to be very rich kid to use windsurf

Kassem Sawan

This is a big problem and this exactly what we have because these issues i I have withdrawn from the service, although I think it started well, but it does not help to continue working and projects that cannot be completed fail, so new solutions must be found, otherwise subscribers will unfortunately leave.

Yazeed Al Oyoun

Couldn’t agree more

Yassine Boumiza

I exploded my credits many times this month and bought credits to the extend I'm considering cursor now... Models with low credits provides low codes quality and introduces new bugs, regressions, and sometime you need to retype the action you want because they just comment, hence you go back to the more expensives models.

Hope the business team doesn't fall into greed that they will kill them...

Nicholuas sommer

This ten million percent. Took me 16 days to go through 3000 tool calls. At 9~10 hours a day. Absolutely ludicrous. Now I’m up schit creek without a paddle until next month. Calude3.7 (think) essentially introduced the absolute worst user facing experience I could’ve ever imagined. I’ll have to check exact metrics. But the tool calls alongside major temperature issues, repetitive loops, and genuinely horrible hallucinations with an ungodly amount of context. I just want to use my own models. I feel severely limited by windsurf these days.

Cody Frisch

Nicholuas sommer Claude 3.7 in general feels like a 3.7 year old kid who has been passive parented who is standing in front of an outlet with a tool bag - having a 1/4" flat blade screwdriver in his hand.

On the flip side in Wave 5, using Winsurf Tab I can get a lot of code out of it. If I very specifically craft prompts to write unit tests first, it picks up on that context and helps me whip out the code quickly. Its about moving in small chunks where you control the specific code being created. Sure its a tad "slower" from the LOC generated perspective but not having to fight with a 3 year old having a tantrum sure is a blessing.

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