Free to start · No hard cutoffs · No credit card
The free Windsurf alternative
Windsurf — ai ide by codeium. It runs Pro plan, about $180/yr per seat. Unchained Code does the same job for $0.
Windsurf
$180/yr
- Seat fee & usage meters
- Message / session caps
- Cooldowns after heavy use
Unchained Code
$0/yr
- Unlimited chat, no card
- No hard cutoffs, no cooldowns
- 10 free credits a day
Why people switch from Windsurf
The agentic IDE, without the subscription.
Unchained runs on open, OpenAI-compatible models (DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, MiniMax) that cost roughly 10× less per token than frontier models. That gap is passed straight to you: the free tier is the product: free to start, no lockouts.