If you have been following agentic IDEs over the past two years, you’re probably aware that the conversation has moved beyond autocomplete. Rather, way beyond. What makes 2026 interesting is scale. According to GitHub’s Octoverse and Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, nearly 80% of new developers use Copilot within their first week, with 51% of professional developers using AI tools daily. Following the footsteps of our comparison between Antigravity and Cursor, now we put Google’s talked-about IDE against Windsurf to see how they stack against each other. Let’s get straight into it.

What “agentic IDE” actually means in 2026

Before comparing Antigravity and Windsurf directly, let’s clarify what agentic IDEs are expected to do today for you, as expectations have risen significantly in 2025. An agentic IDE in 2026 is no longer defined by suggestions alone, and that evolution connects directly to why this comparison matters.

At a high level, modern agentic IDEs are expected to:

• Understand entire repositories rather than single files.
• Plan multi-step code changes before writing anything.
• Execute refactors, migrations, and fixes autonomously.
• Run tests, interpret failures, and iterate without prompts.
• Maintain conversational memory across sessions.

This shift is measurable because Codeium reported in late 2025 that developers using agent-based workflows completed complex refactors up to 35% faster than those relying on inline autocomplete alone. That statistic matters because Windsurf was built around this idea early, while Antigravity is positioning itself as a second-generation response.

Windsurf’s position entering 2026

Windsurf enters 2026 with a clear advantage that connects to almost every metric that matters, which is maturity. Built by Codeium, Windsurf has been publicly available since mid-2024 and is backed by a company that reported over one million monthly active developers across its tools by the end of 2025. That scale shows up in three concrete ways.

First, Windsurf has been battle-tested across real production codebases, and that history shapes how reliable its agent behaviors feel.

Second, Windsurf’s roadmap is largely public and grounded in feedback from enterprise users, including teams at companies like Anduril, Dell, and Canva, as referenced in Codeium’s customer case studies.

Third, Windsurf integrates deeply with existing developer workflows rather than replacing them outright, which lowers adoption friction.

Some defining characteristics of Windsurf include:

• A persistent AI agent that understands repository structure
• Built-in planning steps that are visible and editable
• Native support for VS Code compatibility
• Tight integration with Codeium’s autocomplete and chat stack
• Local and cloud execution modes depending on privacy needs.

Because of that, Windsurf often feels less experimental and more like a natural extension of an IDE developers already trust. Watch this video to learn more about Windsurf and its alternatives.

Antigravity’s emergence and why people are paying attention

Antigravity sits on the other side of the spectrum, and that contrast is exactly why it is part of this conversation. As of early 2026, Antigravity is still relatively new, with limited public adoption numbers and a smaller footprint in enterprise environments. What it lacks in reach, however, it tries to make up for in ambition.

Antigravity positions itself as an “agent-first” IDE rather than an IDE with agents added on, and that philosophical difference affects everything from interface design to task execution.

Based on its published documentation and demos, Antigravity emphasizes:

• Fully autonomous task execution with minimal checkpoints
• A stronger bias toward long-running agents
• Opinionated workflows that reduce manual steering
• Deeper reliance on reasoning chains before code generation

This approach aligns with trends seen in research from organizations like OpenAI and Anthropic, where longer reasoning traces correlate with higher task success on complex programming benchmarks.

The tradeoff, however, is that Antigravity currently exposes fewer controls, which some developers find liberating, and others find risky.

Antigravity vs Windsurf – Feature Comparison

To understand where each IDE excels, it helps to break its capabilities down into concrete categories, because broad labels tend to hide meaningful differences.

Code understanding and context

Both Antigravity and Windsurf claim full-repo awareness, but they arrive there differently.

Windsurf builds context incrementally through indexing and user-driven interactions, while Antigravity attempts to ingest and reason about large portions of a repository upfront.

That difference leads to distinct experiences.

• Windsurf is faster to start, but sometimes needs nudging.
• Antigravity is slower to initialize but often acts decisively.
• Windsurf exposes context boundaries clearly.
• Antigravity abstracts context management almost entirely

In practice, this means Windsurf feels safer for large legacy codebases, while Antigravity feels more confident on greenfield or well-structured projects.

Task planning and execution

Planning is where agentic IDEs either earn trust or lose it, and this is an area where Windsurf’s maturity shows.

Windsurf typically:

• Presents a step-by-step plan
• Allows edits before execution
• Explains why each step exists

Antigravity, by contrast, often:

• Generates a plan implicitly
• Executes with fewer confirmations
• Focuses on outcomes over transparency

Developers coming from tools like GitHub Copilot Chat tend to prefer Windsurf’s visibility, while those comfortable with autonomous agents often appreciate Antigravity’s decisiveness.

Antigravity vs Windsurf – Snapshot

Platform	Windsurf	Antigravity
Release maturity	Public since 2024	Early-stage in 2025-2026
Backing company	Codeium	Google
Repo-scale awareness	Incremental and indexed	Front-loaded and agent-driven
Planning visibility	High and editable	Low to moderate
Autonomy level	Configurable	High by default
Enterprise adoption	Documented case studies	Limited public data
IDE compatibility	VS Code compatible	Custom environment

This table works as a snapshot, but it also highlights a pattern that repeats throughout this comparison, which is control versus autonomy.

Performance, reliability, and real-world data

Performance is difficult to quantify without standardized benchmarks, but some signals are available.

Codeium has published internal evaluations showing Windsurf completing multi-file refactors with fewer regressions compared to baseline LLM chat tools, and independent developers have echoed this on platforms like Hacker News and Reddit.

Antigravity does not yet publish comparable benchmarks, which is not unusual for early-stage tools, but it does create uncertainty.

What can be stated factually is:

• Windsurf benefits from continuous telemetry and feedback loops.
• Antigravity relies more on model capability than historical tuning.
• Windsurf failures are often partial and recoverable.
• Antigravity failures tend to be rarer but more disruptive.

This difference mirrors broader AI system design trends, where systems optimized for safety and oversight trade raw autonomy for predictability.

Developer experience and learning curve

Developer experience matters because agentic IDEs are only valuable if teams trust them enough to use them daily.

Windsurf’s experience feels familiar by design.

• It fits into existing IDE habits.
• It encourages gradual adoption.
• It supports mixed human and agent workflows.

Antigravity feels more like a reset.

• It expects developers to delegate more.
• It minimizes micromanagement
• It assumes comfort with AI-led decisions.

Neither approach is inherently better, but they serve different developer personalities, and that distinction becomes clearer the longer a team uses the tool.

Ecosystem, integrations, and extensibility

Another practical dimension is how each IDE fits into the broader tooling ecosystem, because no IDE exists in isolation.

Windsurf currently integrates with:

• GitHub and GitLab repositories
• Popular CI pipelines
• Codeium’s broader AI stack
• Standard language servers

Antigravity’s ecosystem is narrower but more tightly coupled.

• Fewer third-party integrations
• More native agent extensions
• Less reliance on external tooling

This makes Windsurf easier to adopt in large organizations, while Antigravity appeals to teams willing to reshape workflows around the tool itself.

Security, privacy, and enterprise readiness

Security considerations often decide adoption long before feature lists do, and here the gap between the two becomes more pronounced.

Windsurf benefits from Codeium’s enterprise offerings, which include:

• On-prem and VPC deployment options
• SOC 2 compliance documentation
• Clear data retention policies

Antigravity has fewer public assurances at this stage.

• The security model is still evolving.
• Limited compliance disclosures
• Greater reliance on trust in the vendor

For startups and individual developers, this may not matter, but for regulated industries, it often does.

Who should choose which IDE

Rather than naming a universal winner, it is more honest to connect each tool to the developers it serves best, because context shapes value.

Windsurf tends to be a strong fit for:

• Teams working in large existing codebases
• Organizations with compliance requirements
• Developers who want transparency
• Gradual adoption of agent workflows

Antigravity tends to resonate with:

• Small, fast-moving teams
• Greenfield projects
• Developers are comfortable with autonomy.
• Experimental and research-driven workflows

This distinction explains why both tools can coexist without one immediately displacing the other.

The Bottom Line

Antigravity vs Windsurf really comes down to a very human question: how much control are you comfortable giving up in 2026? Windsurf feels like the IDE that understands where most teams are coming from. It is cautious in the right places, shaped by real-world usage, and supported by data and infrastructure that signal long-term stability. You can see its thinking, interrupt it when needed, and trust it not to wander too far off course.

Antigravity, on the other hand, feels restless by design. It is less concerned with proving itself through adoption metrics and more interested in showing what happens when you let an AI take the lead and move fast. If you value predictability, clarity, and fitting smoothly into the way you already work, Windsurf makes that choice easy. If you are energized by experimentation, comfortable with a little uncertainty, and curious about a future where agents drive more of the development process, Antigravity feels like an early look at what might come next. But if you want the autonomy of Antigravity combined with the control of Windsurf, options such as Bind AI are worth considering.