Codex

Claude Code

Anthropic's official agentic coding CLI — lives in your terminal, reads entire codebases, and executes multi-step tasks autonomously. Surpassed $1B ARR within months of general availability. Multi-agent Code Review ships as a cloud feature that catches bugs before human reviewers see them. The tool Anthropic itself uses for ~60% of internal development work.

Cursor

The leading AI-native IDE — a VS Code fork rebuilt around deep codebase understanding. Composer mode makes coordinated multi-file edits that Copilot can't match; Background Agents work while you focus on other tasks. Reached $2B ARR and $29B valuation by early 2026. The reference tool for serious AI-assisted development despite $20/month pricing and a controversial mid-2025 billing change.

Windsurf

AI-native IDE built around Cascade — an agentic engine that reads your entire codebase and makes coordinated multi-file edits from natural language. Formerly Codeium. Ranked #1 in LogRocket's AI Dev Tool Power Rankings (Feb 2026). Now owned by Cognition (makers of Devin) following a dramatic 2025 acquisition after OpenAI's $3B bid collapsed and Google hired much of the leadership.

Gemini

Google's AI assistant with a 1M+ token context window, available on the web, in Android Studio, and across Workspace. Competes with Claude Code and Copilot for coding tasks.