Both tools chosen. Compare is enabled.
Every pairing here opens a written comparison. Don't see your pair? Pin both tools in the catalogue to compare specs side by side.
Compare
Devin Desktop vs GLM (Z.ai)
A plain-English comparison to help you choose between them.
One sells you a new editor, the other re-powers the tools you have: Devin Desktop is an agentic IDE with its own local agent, GLM a flat-rate plan feeding open-weight models into clients such as Claude Code. Pick Devin Desktop when you want the editor anticipating, multi-file edits arriving from context without brief-writing ceremony, unlimited tab autocomplete, and quota-refresh pricing that stays predictable. Pick GLM when your client is already chosen and the bill is the problem, a subscription from around $18 a month carrying routine agent volume, reversible with a configuration edit.
Side by side
- Summary
Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf, is the local IDE of Cognition's Devin family: an agentic editor whose local agent executes multi-step coding tasks, with unlimited tab autocompletion and quota-based pricing that refreshes predictably rather than metering anxiety.
- Best for
- Agentic editing with a local multi-step agent
- Unlimited tab autocomplete without metering
- Predictable quota-refresh pricing
- Cost
- Freemium (Free tier + paid plans)
- Ease
- Openness
- Hosted service
- Data
- Standard cloud-assistant posture with enterprise controls on team plans; code context handling is documented for review.
- Summary
GLM is Z.ai's coding-first model family, sold less as a new tool than as a change to what powers the one you already have.
- Best for
- Flat-rate coding subscription from around $18 a month
- MIT-licensed GLM-5.2 open weights you can self-host
- A 1M-token context for large-codebase work
- Cost
- Freemium (Free tier + paid plans)
- Ease
- Openness
- Runs privately (self-hostable)
- Data
- GLM's hosted API is served from China, a jurisdiction point to weigh before routing real code or prompts through it. Self-hosting the open weights removes that question entirely: the model runs on infrastructure you control, and nothing leaves it.
Common questions
Are these even the same purchase?
Adjacent purchases with one budget line: both lower the cost or friction of daily agent-assisted coding. The fork is commitment. Devin Desktop asks you to adopt an editor, a VS Code fork with the agent woven in; GLM asks you to change nothing except what powers the client you already run. Teams settled in a workflow lean GLM; teams still choosing lean the IDE.
What histories should an evaluation weigh?
Devin Desktop's is churn: formerly Windsurf, folded into the Devin family in a mid-2026 rebrand that follows earlier upheavals, a datum for stability-first buyers who should evaluate the current product rather than the old name. GLM's is jurisdictional: the hosted API is served from China, a question some organisations must answer before routing source code through it, with self-hosting the structural out.
Where do both defer to the frontier?
On the hardest work, and GLM says so plainly: ambiguous specifications and sustained multi-agent sessions still favour the closed frontier models, so its plan is a daily driver beside a retained frontier seat. Devin Desktop's family answer is different, the same company's autonomous cloud Devin handling delegation when the local editor's rhythm is not the right shape for the task.
Related comparisons
Read the full guides
Where to start
Not sure what to adopt first?
Five quick questions about your job, task and constraints. We'll suggest your top three tools, plus the one to try first.
Tool facts last checked July 2026