Spyder vs. Windsurf

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Spyder
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Spyder is a free and open source scientific environment for Python. It combines advanced editing, analysis, debugging, and profiling, with data exploration, interactive execution, deep inspection, and visualization capabilities. Spyder is sponsored by open source supporters QuanSight, and NumFOCUS, as well as individual donors.
$0
per month
Windsurf
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Windsurf (formerly Codeium) is an AI dev tool that is self-hosted for security, with features including rapid code autocomplete, in-editor AI chat assistant, repo natural language search, end-to-end data encryption.
$15
per month for 500 prompt credits/month Equivalent to 2,000 GPT-4.1 prompts (4 prompts per credit)
Pricing
SpyderWindsurf
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Pro
$15
per month 500 credits/mo
Team
$30
per month per user (500 credits/user/mo)
Enterprise
$60
per month per user (up to 200 users & 1,000 credits/user/mo)
Enterprise (more than 200 uses)
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SpyderWindsurf
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SpyderWindsurf
Best Alternatives
SpyderWindsurf
Small Businesses
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SpyderWindsurf
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(8 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SpyderWindsurf
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
Spyder is an open-source Python IDE designed for the movement of data science work. Spyder comes with an Anaconda package manager distribution, so depending on your setup you may have installed it on your machine.
Spyder includes most of the "standard IDE" features you can expect, such as a strong syntax code editor, Python code rendering, and an integrated text browser.
Spyder is used when we want to develop a code that is useful and able to explore proper documentation of the code that has been written. We use Spyder to perform data-related operations like filtration, cleaning, and enhancing the data qualities. There some cases where it is less appropriate like working in an environment, creating dashboards of data visualizations and plots.
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Cognition AI, Inc.
If you already have technical knowledge and understanding of coding, Windsurf could be a valuable platform to debug and rewrite code. It was helpful to me to expand coding, since I am not a traditionally programmer. I was able to enhance my base code and functionality much quicker than manually trying.
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Pros
Open Source
  • Provides wider screen to read and write code and flexibility to adjust size as per requirement.
  • While running the code it provide the variable overview and memory overview
  • Lightweight and easily available in Anaconda Navigator
  • Multiple compilation options are available
  • Works well for data analytics, Django, Flask and Fast API frameworks
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Cognition AI, Inc.
  • Quick code isolation of sytax errors
  • quick suggestions on how to correct coding error
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Cons
Open Source
  • Colors in code format
  • Add a broadcast to share the project with friends
  • Contains more than one important language such as Python
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Cognition AI, Inc.
  • Windsurf is target to more medium to advanced users
  • Windsurf does fast debugging, but technical skills are needed.
  • Windsurf is not as intuitive as I initially thought.
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Usability
Open Source
It is fairly straightforward to use. Pretty much good to go as soon as you install it. The IDE itself is very user friendly, and it is only limited by whatever limitations Python has as a language. Great for those who want to run their scripts quickly or do some Python programming without fussing.
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Cognition AI, Inc.
Windsurf is a good tool for developers with more than basic coding skills. I would recommend it as a tool to quickly mitigate coding errors and issues. I did not take a deeper dive into the integrated extensions, but the library of extensions appear to be solid. An experience developer could quickly launch this platform, scan and test coding, and resolve issues quickly. I did not test this for larger code sets.
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Support Rating
Open Source
Most of data scientists or data engineers are either using ec2 on the cloud or Atom or PyCharm locally. It is a bit hard to find people who are still using Spyder and have the sight of the IDE and can help you to answer your question.
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Cognition AI, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source
I think Spyder doesn't stack up as well as other IDEs due to its many limitations. But it is available for free and that is one advantage it has over its competitors
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Cognition AI, Inc.
Windsurf would be more comparable to GitHub Copilot or Perplexity to me. I think it's more of a pure code debugging line by line than some of the other tools listed above, however, they all have some capabilities to rewrite and test new coding. It boils down to what toolset you are most comfortable with. I typically will work with two platforms with the same issue to see how it is approached and the differences.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • It has helped me learn python quickly
  • The ability to generate figures quickly and interact with them is helpful
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Cognition AI, Inc.
  • ROI is significant time saved from debugging, rewriting code, and testing
  • AI generated development can test executable code in a controlled environment
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