v0 vs Windsurf: Which is better?

v0 by Vercel is an AI-powered tool that generates React UI components from natural language prompts.

Windsurf is an AI-powered IDE developed by Codeium, featuring Cascade — an agentic AI system that can plan and execute multi-step coding tasks across an entire codebase. Unlike assistants that respond to individual prompts, Cascade maintains full awareness of your project structure, terminal state, and recent changes to autonomously implement features, fix bugs, and refactor code end-to-end. Windsurf also includes real-time AI autocomplete, inline chat, and deep integration with popular language servers, making it one of the most capable agentic development environments available.

View Windsurf

Key features

Prompt-to-UI — describe a screen and v0 returns production-ready React + Tailwind code.
Component library aware — generates code on shadcn/ui by default, plus your own design system.
Iterative chat — refine layouts, swap components, or restyle by chatting with the canvas.
One-click deploy to Vercel — ship the generated app to a live URL without leaving v0.
Image and Figma input — paste a screenshot or Figma frame to bootstrap a component.

Windsurf

Cascade agent — plans and applies coordinated multi-file edits.
Context awareness — tracks your actions to stay in sync with the codebase.

v0 vs Windsurf: Which is better?

v v0

v0 by Vercel is an AI-powered tool that generates React UI components from natural language prompts.

View v0

W Windsurf

View Windsurf

Key features

Prompt-to-UI — describe a screen and v0 returns production-ready React + Tailwind code.
Component library aware — generates code on shadcn/ui by default, plus your own design system.
Iterative chat — refine layouts, swap components, or restyle by chatting with the canvas.
One-click deploy to Vercel — ship the generated app to a live URL without leaving v0.
Image and Figma input — paste a screenshot or Figma frame to bootstrap a component.

Windsurf

Cascade agent — plans and applies coordinated multi-file edits.
Context awareness — tracks your actions to stay in sync with the codebase.

Useful for

Frontend engineers who want a head start on layouts and forms.
Product designers shipping prototypes that real engineers can extend.
Founders building MVP UIs without a full design system in place.

Windsurf

Developers who want an AI agent that can plan and carry out multi-step coding tasks.
Engineers who prefer an editor that keeps context as the codebase changes.
Teams that want AI autocomplete, chat, and an agent in a single IDE.

Use cases

Bootstrapping a new product UI from a description or screenshot.
Generating dashboards, pricing pages, and forms in shadcn/Tailwind.
Converting Figma frames into working React components.
Rapid prototyping for design reviews and stakeholder demos.

Windsurf

Letting an AI agent implement a feature across multiple files.
Getting context-aware autocomplete while writing code.
Asking the editor to debug or explain existing code.