Overclock vs Cursor vs Windsurf: A Data-Driven Comparison (March 2026)

Overclock Team·March 27, 2026

The Short Version

We calculated the real monthly cost of using Claude Opus 4.6 agent sessions across Overclock, Cursor, and Windsurf — using each product's publicly listed pricing as of March 2026.

| Sessions/month | Overclock | Cursor Pro | Windsurf Pro | |---|---|---|---| | 5 | $14.43 | $25.00 | $20.00 | | 10 | $15.85 | $50.00 | $20.00 | | 20 | $18.70 | $100.00 | $20.00 | | 30 | $21.55 | $150.00 | $20.00 | | 50 | $27.25 | $250.00 | $20.00 |

Overclock costs are calculated as €12/month (~$13) subscription plus $0.285 per Opus 4.6 session (with prompt caching). Cursor costs assume $5.00 per Opus session beyond the 4 included. Windsurf costs assume sessions stay within the ~62 included in the base quota.

Keep reading for how we got these numbers.

How Each Product Charges You

Cursor Pro — Credit Pool

Cursor Pro costs $20/month. That $20 doubles as an API credit pool. Every time you use Claude Opus 4.6, Cursor deducts $5.00 from your pool. That means your $20 subscription covers approximately 4 Opus 4.6 agent sessions per month.

Need more? Each additional session costs $5.00. At 10 sessions, you're at $50. At 30, you're at $150. Cursor is by far the most expensive option for heavy Opus users.

Tab completions and cheaper models are unlimited, so if you mostly use Sonnet or Haiku and rely on autocomplete, Cursor Pro can be good value. But the moment you start relying on Opus for agentic coding, costs escalate fast.

Windsurf Pro — Quota with Daily Caps

Windsurf changed its pricing in March 2026. The old model was $15/month with a pooled credit system (~500 credits, roughly 62 Opus sessions). The new model is $20/month with a quota-based system that refreshes on daily and weekly schedules.

Claude Opus 4.6 costs 2× the standard quota multiplier. The key difference from the old model: you can no longer burn through your entire monthly allowance in a weekend sprint. Daily hard caps limit how many Opus sessions you can run in a single day, regardless of how much monthly quota remains.

Add-on packs are available at $10 for 250 credits, working out to roughly $0.32 per additional Opus session — much cheaper than Cursor's $5.00 overage.

Overclock — BYOK Flat Subscription

Overclock costs €12/month (~$13). That's a flat software subscription. AI model costs are separate — you bring your own Anthropic API key and pay Anthropic directly at their published rates.

There are no daily caps, no session limits, no quota multipliers, and no markup on API costs. You choose which model runs every prompt. You can set a per-session budget cap so you never get surprised.

The key to Overclock's cost advantage is prompt caching, which we cover next.

The Caching Advantage

Every Overclock session automatically caches your system prompt, CLAUDE.md file, and tool definitions using Anthropic's prompt caching API. This means repeated context — which makes up the bulk of every request — is read from cache instead of re-processed.

Overclock supports two cache TTL options:

5-minute TTL: Used for tool definitions. Cache write costs 1.25× normal input price, but every subsequent read costs just 10% of normal input price.
1-hour TTL: Used for CLAUDE.md and system context. Cache write costs 2× normal input price, but reads are the same 10% of normal input.

Here's the math for a typical Opus 4.6 session:

| Token type | Tokens | Rate | Cost | |---|---|---|---| | Cached input (read) | ~20,000 | $0.50/M | $0.010 | | Non-cached input | ~30,000 | $5.00/M | $0.150 | | Output | ~5,000 | $25.00/M | $0.125 | | Total | | | $0.285 |

That's $0.285 per session — compared to $5.00 per session on Cursor. The caching effect compounds: the more you work in a session, the higher the cache hit rate, and the lower your per-request cost becomes.

When Windsurf's Quota is Better Value

Let's be honest: if you run fewer than ~30 Opus sessions per month and don't mind daily caps, Windsurf's base quota can be cost-competitive. At 20 sessions, Windsurf costs $20 flat vs. Overclock's $18.70 — a marginal difference.

But there are important trade-offs:

Daily caps: Windsurf enforces daily hard limits. If you're in the middle of a complex refactor and hit your daily cap, you wait until tomorrow. Overclock has no daily limits.
Cost transparency: With Overclock, you see exact token counts, cache hit rates, and dollar costs for every session. Windsurf shows credit/quota usage only.
Session budget control: Overclock lets you set a per-session maxBudgetUsd so a runaway agent loop doesn't drain your API balance. Windsurf has no equivalent.
Base price: Overclock's subscription is €12/month (~$13) vs. Windsurf's $20/month. Even when your total costs are similar, more of your money goes to actual API usage with Overclock.

If you're a light Opus user who rarely hits daily caps, Windsurf is a reasonable choice. If you're a heavy user or want full control, Overclock wins.

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Overclock if:

You're a heavy Claude Opus 4.6 user (10+ sessions/month)
You want full cost control and transparency
You don't want daily rate caps on expensive models
You value configurable session budgets
You want to benefit from prompt caching savings

Choose Cursor if:

You mostly use tab completions and lighter models
VS Code extension compatibility matters to you
You prefer one simple subscription with no API key management
You use Opus sparingly (≤4 sessions/month fits in the $20 credit pool)

Choose Windsurf if:

You use Windsurf's SWE-1.5 model (free within quota)
You're a light Opus user who won't hit daily caps
You prefer an all-inclusive subscription
You're fine with daily and weekly usage limits

Pricing data sourced from cursor.com/pricing, windsurf.com/pricing, and anthropic.com/pricing as of March 2026. Overclock is not affiliated with Cursor or Windsurf. Verify current pricing before subscribing.