Top 10 Windsurf Features You Should Know in 2026

Unlocking Windsurf's Full Potential

Codeium's free AI coding assistant with impressive capabilities. But many users only scratch the surface of what Windsurf can do.

In this guide, we'll explore 10 features that separate power users from beginners, helping you get maximum value from your ide investment.

1. Free tier

Perhaps Windsurf's most celebrated capability is its free tier. This isn't just marketing speak—it translates to measurable improvements in output quality and reliability.

Pro tip: Leverage this by structuring your prompts to take full advantage of this strength.

2. Fast completions

Codeium invested heavily in fast completions, and it shows. Users consistently report this as a key differentiator when evaluating ide options.

3. Project-aware Context Window

With Project-aware of context, Windsurf can process entire codebases, lengthy documents, or complex conversation histories without losing track of important details.

4. Streaming Responses

Real-time streaming dramatically improves user experience:

# Enable streaming for better UX
for chunk in client.stream(prompt="Your question"):
    print(chunk, end="", flush=True)
    

5. JSON Mode

Extract structured data reliably with JSON mode:

response = client.generate(
    prompt="Extract entities from this text",
    response_format={"type": "json_object"}
)
data = json.loads(response.text)
    

6. Privacy focus

System prompts let you define consistent behavior across all interactions, crucial for maintaining quality in production applications.

7. API Rate Management

Understanding Windsurf's rate limits helps you build robust applications that gracefully handle high load.

8. Cost Optimization

At Free tier available, smart caching and prompt optimization can significantly reduce your monthly costs while maintaining quality.

9. Integration Ecosystem

Codeium has built extensive integrations with popular tools and frameworks, making Windsurf easy to incorporate into existing workflows.

10. Continuous Updates

Codeium regularly updates Windsurf with improvements. Stay current with their changelog to take advantage of new capabilities as they're released.

Conclusion

Mastering these 10 features will transform how you use Windsurf. Start with the capabilities most relevant to your use case—individual developers or open source projects—and expand from there.