Windsurf Releases SWE-1: A Powerful Coding Model That's FREE For A Limited Time

So many vibe coders are update with Cursor's recent price and rate limit changes. If you are one of those looking for Cursor alternative, give Windsurf a try.

Windsurf, the popular coding IDE and one of the top alternative tools to Cursor, released a new family of in-house models called SWE-1.

This family is currently comprised of three distinct models:

• SWE-1: Approximately Claude 3.5 Sonnet levels of tool-call reasoning while being cheaper to serve.

• SWE-1-lite: A smaller model that replaces Cascade Base at better quality.

• SWE-1-mini: A small, extremely fast model that powers the Windsurf Tab passive experience for all users, free or paid.

SWE stands for Software Engineer. These SWE-1 models are not just built for coding, they are optimized for the entire software engineering process.

According to Windsurf, writing code is only a fraction of what you do. The goal is to accelerate software development by 99%.

In this article, I’ll discuss about what SWE-1 model is, how to access, and my initial thoughts about it. Let’s get started.