Windsurf, a popular startup in the vibe coding space that is reportedly on the verge of being acquired by OpenAI, announced that Anthropic has significantly restricted its direct access to Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI models.
Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan stated on social media that Anthropic gave little advance notice about this change, forcing the company to seek other third-party compute providers to run some of Anthropic’s most popular AI models on its platform.
“We were very clear with Anthropic that we wanted to pay for full capacity. This decision and short notice are disappointing,” Mohan said.
In a blog post, Windsurf also mentioned that while they have some capacity through third-party providers, it is insufficient, which may cause short-term availability issues for users trying to access Claude models.
This decision came just weeks after the launch of Anthropic’s Claude 4 models. Windsurf did not receive direct access to Claude 4 at launch and still hasn’t, forcing the company to rely on a more expensive and complicated workaround. Meanwhile, other popular AI coding tools like Anysphere’s Cursor, Cognition’s Devin, and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot had direct access to Claude 4 models from the start.
The vibe coding sector has grown rapidly in recent months. OpenAI reportedly reached an agreement to acquire Windsurf in April. At the same time, Anthropic has been investing more heavily in its own AI coding applications, launching Claude Code in February and holding the Code with Claude developer conference in May.
Anthropic spokesperson Steve Mnich told TechCrunch that the company is prioritizing capacity for sustainable partnerships to better serve the broader developer community. He added that it is still possible to access Claude 4 on Windsurf via an API key, and developers can also use Claude through direct API integration, the partner ecosystem, and other development tools.
Windsurf has grown quickly this year, reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by April. However, limited access to Anthropic’s models may be hindering the company’s growth.
Several Windsurf users expressed frustration over the lack of direct access to Anthropic’s best AI coding models. Ronald Mannak, founder of a startup specializing in Apple’s Swift programming language, said Claude 4 represented a significant upgrade for his workloads. Although a Windsurf customer since late 2024, he recently switched to Cursor to more easily vibe code with Claude 4.
As a short-term solution, Windsurf allows users to connect their own Anthropic API keys to their accounts. However, developers note that this “bring your own key” approach is more expensive and complicated than having Windsurf provide the models directly.
In the vibe coding world, offering users a choice is crucial because OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic frequently release new and more powerful coding models. Windsurf spokesperson Payal Patel told TechCrunch that the company has always believed in providing options for users, but this time Anthropic has made that more challenging.
