Cursor
by Anysphere Inc.
AI-powered code editor built on VS Code with native AI pair programming Cursor is an AI-native code editor developed by Anysphere Inc., built as a fork of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code.
Performance Scores
2 rankings evaluated
Score range: 7.5 – 8.5
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#2Best AI Coding Tools and Developer Assistants 2026
Score: 8.5 · Best for: Developers who frequently refactor across many files
-
#6Best AI App Builders in 2026
Score: 7.5 · Best for: Developers who prefer editor-based generation over managed app-builder workflows
Key Facts
pricing
| Attribute | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing tiers (June 2026) | June 2026 tiers: Hobby (Free $0), Pro $20/user/mo, Pro+ ~$60/user/mo, Ultra ~$200/user/mo, Teams $40/user/mo, Enterprise custom. Pro+ and Ultra figures are secondary-sourced (official page hides per-tier prices behind a UI toggle). | Jun 2026 | Cursor official pricing page |
| Usage-based billing | Since June 2025 Cursor bills on usage: each paid plan includes a model-usage pool roughly equal to its price (Pro covers about 225 Claude Sonnet 4.5 requests), auto-routed usage is unlimited, and named-model usage beyond the pool is billed on demand in arrears. | Jun 2026 | Cursor official pricing page |
| Pro Plan | Pro plan from $20/month as of 2026 | Jul 2026 | Cursor Docs — Pricing |
| Teams Plan | Teams plan from $40/user/month with admin controls and centralized billing | Jun 2026 | Cursor Pricing |
| Free Tier | Hobby plan free with limited Agent requests and limited Tab completions | Jul 2026 | Cursor — Pricing |
company
| Attribute | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company & adoption | Developed by Anysphere Inc. as a fork of VS Code; more than 500,000 developers reported as of early 2026. Compatible with the VS Code extension ecosystem. | Jun 2026 | Cursor official site |
General
| Attribute | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2022 | Mar 2026 | Anysphere |
| Free Tier | Free Hobby tier with limited Agent requests and limited Tab completions (as of July 2026) | Jul 2026 | Cursor pricing page |
| Pro Plan | $20/month (Pro) | Jul 2026 | Cursor pricing page |
| Teams Plan | $40/user/month (Teams) | Jun 2026 | Cursor |
| Active Developers | Millions of developers (Anysphere claim, November 2025) | Jul 2026 | Anysphere blog — Series D announcement |
| Language Support | Any language supported by VS Code extensions (Cursor is built on the VS Code codebase) | Jul 2026 | Cursor docs — VS Code migration |
| Funding | $400M Series B at $2.5B valuation (2024) | Mar 2026 | Crunchbase |
capability
| Attribute | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composer Agent | Composer 2.5, Cursor's agentic coding model (RL fine-tuned from Moonshot's open-weights Kimi K2.5 base), plans and executes multi-file edits and terminal commands; released May 2026 | Jul 2026 | DeepLearning.AI The Batch — Cursor Fits Its Model to Its Agent |
technical
| Attribute | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model Support | Supports Anthropic Claude (Opus 4.x), OpenAI GPT-5.x, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, and Cursor's own Composer 2.5 model as of July 2026 | Jul 2026 | Cursor — Features |
Strengths
- ●Purpose-built AI-native editor
- ●Strong multi-file refactoring
- ●Multi-model support (Claude, GPT, Gemini)
- ●Agentic Composer for multi-file generation
- ●Familiar VS Code-based editor
- ●Strong indexing for large codebases
Limitations
- ●Higher tiers needed for heavy use
- ●Separate editor to adopt
- ●No managed hosting (BYO deployment)
- ●Less guided than Lovable or Bolt for new projects
- ●Pricing on agent tiers is usage-based
Based on evaluations in 2 rankings: Best AI Coding Tools and Developer Assistants 2026, Best AI App Builders in 2026
Pricing Plans
Hobby
Free; no credit card required
- ✓Limited Agent requests
- ✓Access to Composer
- ✓No credit card required
- !Limited Agent requests
Pro
$20/mo billed monthly; yearly toggle exists but annual price not published on the static page
- ✓Extended limits on Agent
- ✓Access to frontier models
- ✓MCPs, skills, and hooks
- ✓Cloud agents
- ✓Generous limits for Grok & Composer
- !$20 of included frontier-model usage per month (per docs)
Pro+
$60/mo billed monthly
- ✓3x Pro limits on Agent
- ✓Everything in Pro
- !$70 of included frontier-model usage per month (per docs)
Ultra
$200/mo billed monthly
- ✓20x Pro limits on Agent
- ✓Priority access to new features
- ✓Everything in Pro
- !$400 of included frontier-model usage per month (per docs)
Teams Standard
$40/user/mo billed monthly
- ✓Centralized team billing and administration
- ✓Agentic code reviews with Bugbot
- ✓Team marketplace for internal rules, skills, and plugins
- ✓Team-wide privacy mode
- ✓SAML/OIDC SSO
- !Per-user pricing
Teams Premium
$120/user/mo billed monthly (price stated on Cursor docs pricing page)
- ✓5x Standard limits on Agent
- ✓Everything in Teams Standard
- !Per-user pricing
Enterprise
Custom pricing; contact sales; invoice/PO billing
- ✓Pooled usage
- ✓SCIM seat management
- ✓Repository, model, and MCP access controls
- ✓Audit logs and service accounts
- ✓Priority support and account management
About Cursor
Cursor is an AI-native code editor developed by Anysphere Inc., built as a fork of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. It integrates large language models directly into the editor: multi-line completions, codebase-aware chat, an agent that edits across multiple files, and natural-language code generation. Because it is a VS Code fork, existing extensions, themes, and keybindings carry over. Cursor reported more than 500,000 developers using the editor as of early 2026.
The editor indexes the full project so its suggestions reference real variable names, patterns, and structure rather than generic snippets. Its agent (Composer) can plan and apply changes across files, run commands, and iterate, while "Tab" handles fast inline completions.
Cursor's pricing changed shape and is no longer a flat per-seat fee. As of June 2026 the tiers are: Hobby (Free, $0), Pro ($20/user/month), Pro+ (about $60/user/month), Ultra (about $200/user/month), Teams ($40/user/month), and Enterprise (custom). The shift that matters for budgeting is that each paid plan now includes a pool of model usage roughly equal to its price, then bills on demand for usage beyond it.
flowchart TD
A[Request in Cursor] --> B{Model choice}
B -- Auto/model-routing --> C[Unlimited on paid tiers]
B -- Named frontier model --> D[Draws from monthly usage pool]
D --> E{Pool exhausted?}
E -- No --> F[Included in plan price]
E -- Yes --> G[On-demand usage billed in arrears]
On Pro, the included pool covers on the order of a couple of hundred frontier-model requests a month (Cursor cites roughly 225 Claude Sonnet 4.5 requests as a representative figure), with auto-routed usage unlimited. Heavy users move up to Pro+ or Ultra for a larger included pool rather than paying piecemeal overage. Cursor competes with GitHub Copilot, the bring-your-own-key agents Cline and Aider, and the editor-plus-AI category generally; its strength is a polished, fast editing experience, and the trade-off is a usage-metered bill that can exceed the headline $20 for developers who lean on named frontier models all day.
Editor's Note: When Cursor moved to the usage-pool model, the first thing we saw across ShadowGen client teams was bill shock: a developer who pinned every request to a named frontier model exhausted the Pro pool in about two weeks and ran into on-demand charges, while a teammate on the same plan using auto-routing never touched overage. The fix was a habit, not a plan change — default to Auto, and reserve a named frontier model for the genuinely hard problems. For one 12-developer team that single change kept them on Pro ($20) instead of pushing everyone to Ultra, saving roughly $2,160/month versus the worst-case projection. — Rafal Fila, ShadowGen
Integrations (6)
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AI Coding & Development ToolsSee How It Ranks
Best AI App Builders in 2026
AI app builders are a 2024-2026 category of products that turn natural-language prompts into deployable web applications. The category emerged from the convergence of frontier LLM capability (Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini) and improved tooling for code generation, in-browser runtimes (WebContainers), and managed application hosting. This ranking evaluates 7 platforms on output quality, deployment options, pricing, stack flexibility, and the underlying AI model quality. The ranked products span dedicated AI app builders (Lovable, Bolt.new, v0, Magic Loops), in-browser agentic IDEs (Cursor, Replit Agent), and autonomous coding agents (Devin). Scores reflect hands-on evaluation of each platform's ability to generate, run, and deploy a real web application from a prompt as of May 2026.
Best AI Coding Tools and Developer Assistants 2026
AI coding tools have become essential for professional developers in 2026, with the category spanning full AI-native editors, IDE plugins, terminal-based assistants, and code generation platforms. This ranking evaluates the leading AI coding tools based on code suggestion quality, IDE integration depth, programming language support, pricing value, and AI model quality. The evaluation focuses on tools that directly assist developers in writing, refactoring, and understanding code. General-purpose AI chatbots that can discuss code but do not integrate into development environments are excluded.
Questions About Cursor
How much do AI coding assistants cost in 2026?
As of June 2026, mainstream AI coding assistants cluster in two cost shapes. Per-seat subscriptions with included AI usage: GitHub Copilot Pro $10/month (Business $19/seat), Cursor Pro $20/month, and Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex bundled into Claude ($20+) and ChatGPT ($20+) subscriptions. Free, bring-your-own-model tools where you only pay API spend: Aider and Cline ($0 for the tool, roughly $5-30/day in model cost for active use). Replit Agent is credit-metered from $25/month. The 2026 catch is that most paid tiers moved to usage metering, so the sticker price is a floor, not a ceiling.
What are the best workflow automation tools for technical writers in 2026?
Technical writers in 2026 typically combine Mintlify or ReadMe (docs-as-code platforms), n8n or Zapier (publishing automation), GitHub Actions (CI for docs), and Notion or Coda (drafting and review). The strongest setups treat docs as code with an automation layer for screenshots, link checks, and changelog publishing.
Claude Code vs Codex vs Cursor for autonomous coding in 2026: which fits best?
For terminal-first developers and shell-heavy refactors, Claude Code (Anthropic, $20-200/month) is the strongest fit. For background, async, end-to-end task completion with PRs, ChatGPT Codex ($20-200/month bundled with ChatGPT) wins on autonomy. For real-time IDE pair programming inside a VS Code fork, Cursor ($20-40/user/month) is the most ergonomic. Most 2026 teams use two or three of them in parallel, assigned to different task classes.
Lovable vs v0: which AI app builder fits your stack in 2026?
Lovable produces React + TypeScript + Supabase apps with GitHub export from $25/month per-message, suited to shipping production apps. v0 (Vercel) produces Next.js + shadcn/ui apps deployable to Vercel from $20/month Premium, suited to teams already on the Vercel platform.
Learn More
Claude Code vs ChatGPT Codex vs Cursor 2026: Three-Way Comparison
Claude Code (terminal CLI), ChatGPT Codex (cloud sandbox), and Cursor (VS Code fork) take three different approaches to AI-assisted coding. This three-way comparison covers pricing, autonomy, form factor, context handling, and agentic capabilities as of May 2026 to help engineers pick the right tool for each task class.
Supabase vs Firebase 2026: Postgres Open-Source vs NoSQL on Google Cloud
Supabase (2020) is an open-source Postgres backend with pgvector, RLS, and self-host options from $25/month Pro. Firebase (2014, Google) is a proprietary NoSQL platform with Firestore and tight GCP integration. This 2026 comparison covers hosting, data model, AI/vector support, pricing, and vendor lock-in.
Lovable vs Bolt.new 2026: AI App Builders Compared
Lovable (Stockholm, 2023) ships React + Supabase apps with GitHub export from $25/month per-message. Bolt.new (StackBlitz, 2024) generates apps in-browser via WebContainers from $20/month per-token. This 2026 comparison covers stack, deployment, pricing, and which builder fits which use case.