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AnysphereAI Coding Agent

Cursor

AI coding agent and code editor for writing, reviewing, and shipping software, with agents in the editor, the terminal, and the cloud.

The 30-Second Take

Pick Cursor if your engineers want completion, an agent and pull request review in one editor.

The model each engineer picks sets the bill, so settle that before seats go out. More teams writing publicly moved agent work out of Cursor to a separate agent than kept it in the editor.

Best fit
Teams that want completion and agents in one editor, with shared rules so output stays consistent.
Main constraint
The model each engineer picks drives how fast included usage runs out, since third-party models bill at API rates.
First move
Cap team spending and commit shared project rules before issuing seats.

Why

Watch the included usage: Grok and Composer draw on it, and third-party models bill at API rates. Teams lists from US$30 per user a month, and Coinbase and Stripe run a terminal agent beside it.

Practitioner sentiment, leaders and teams+11 Mixed

47 practitioners, 183 sources reviewed, Updated Nov 1, 2026How this is measured

Read the GILD Review
Save a product your organization uses.Keep up with Cursor without adding it to your stack.Visit Website
Operating stack
Agentic Software Development

Comparisons

How does Cursor compare with the alternatives?

See all 13 comparisons

  1. Cursor vs Claude Code

    • AI Coding Agents

    Choose Cursor to pick a model per task in one editor, where the picks set the bill. Claude Code keeps every editor, JetBrains included, on Anthropic's models and a per-seat allowance; its VS Code extension also runs inside Cursor.

  2. Cursor vs Codex

    • AI Coding Agents

    Choose Cursor if the team will move into one editor and wants models from several providers. Choose Codex to keep current editors, with the agent bundled into ChatGPT plans or API usage; its pull requests merge more often in public studies.

  3. Cursor vs GitHub Copilot

    • AI Coding Agents

    Copilot costs less per seat, keeps engineers in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse and Xcode, and turns a GitHub issue into a pull request. Cursor asks the team to move into its editor, and its Bugbot reviews on GitLab and Bitbucket as well as GitHub.

Operator Insights

What are engineering leaders learning from deploying Cursor?

See all 16 operator accounts

Buying and deployment

What engineering leaders should verify before a broader rollout.

Sourced from Cursor documentation

How you buy it

US$8 to US$200

A month across the new X Subscription plans. Older Pro and Teams plans run until you switch.

Source 1, cursor.com, Pricing: PricingSource 2, Cursor, Models & pricing: Models & pricingSource 5, cursor.com, Legacy Cursor plans: Legacy Cursor plansSource 12, forum.cursor.com, Cursor forum: Introducing The X Subscription (Oct 12, 2026): Cursor forum: Introducing The X Subscription (Oct 12, 2026)

Details

Cursor announced The X Subscription on October 12, 2026, and now sells new plans only inside it, one subscription for Grok, Cursor, and X. Plus US$8 (Grok models only), Premium US$30, Super US$100, or Ultra US$200 per month, and Teams seats at US$30, US$100, or US$200 per user per month; Enterprise is custom. Pro US$20, Pro+ US$60, the earlier Ultra, and Teams Standard US$40 and Premium US$120 seats are legacy plans: they keep working for existing subscribers, and new customers start on the X Subscription.

Cost drivers

One weekly pool

Shared by Cursor and Grok on the new plans. Third-party models bill at API list price.

Source 1, cursor.com, Pricing: PricingSource 2, Cursor, Models & pricing: Models & pricingSource 5, cursor.com, Legacy Cursor plans: Legacy Cursor plans

Details

Each paid plan includes one weekly usage pool for Cursor's own models, shared with Grok. Third-party models are not included: on Premium and above they bill at API list price from prepaid credit, from the first request, and Teams, X Subscription Teams included, and Enterprise add a US$0.25 per million token rate on eligible third-party models, counting input, output and cached tokens, with listed lightweight models exempt. Legacy plans keep two monthly pools and bill on-demand usage in arrears.

Where it runs

Editor, CLI, cloud

A desktop editor, a terminal CLI, an agent in JetBrains, and cloud agents.

Source 6, cursor.com, Download Cursor: Download CursorSource 7, Cursor, Cursor CLI: Cursor CLISource 8, Cursor, JetBrains integration: JetBrains integrationSource 9, Cursor, Cloud Agents: Cloud Agents

Details

Desktop editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux, a terminal CLI, an agent inside JetBrains IDEs through ACP, and cloud agents started from the web, iOS app, Slack, GitHub, or Linear.

What to verify

Privacy Mode

On by default only for Enterprise. Check it, approvals, spend limits, and your plan.

Source 4, Cursor, Privacy & data governance: Privacy & data governanceSource 3, Cursor, Agent security: Agent securitySource 2, Cursor, Models & pricing: Models & pricingSource 10, cursor.com, Computer use and desktop sharing: Computer use and desktop sharingSource 11, status.cursor.com, Cursor status page: Cursor status page

Details

Check which plan generation your contract is on and how Privacy Mode is enforced, since it is on by default only for Enterprise. Check terminal and MCP approval settings and the team's monthly additional usage limit. Cloud agents store code. Decide whether agents on self-hosted machines may use computer use, which lets them click, type, and drive desktop apps; on Enterprise an admin can switch it off. Cursor's status page, status.cursor.com, now serves the SpaceXSI status page, so point incident alerts there.

Signals

What is the current evidence saying about Cursor?

A source-linked read of what engineering leaders, teams, and builders report about Cursor.

Whose sources count

Practitioner sentiment, leaders and teams

+11 Mixed net

of 47 sources that take a side, each author counted once.

How this figure is made

12 more state no overall view and cast no vote.

Current sentiment

Positive, mixed and negative sources

Team and leader accounts lean positive. Model choice draws the most praise, in 6 of 7 accounts. Cost draws the most concern, followed by uneven output and review load. Thirteen teams keep agent work in Cursor, while sixteen moved it to a separate agent, among them Applied Intuition.

Use a task pilot to measure accepted work and review time.

Evidence field. All 183 sources, one mark each.

Arrange by

Each mark is one source: positive, mixed, negative, no opinion stated, or documentation (not counted).

By sentiment, Engineering leaders and teams. Every source GILD read, grouped as the field draws it.
GroupSourcesPositiveMixedNegativeNo opinion stated and not counted in the scoreDocumentation, checked and not counted
Positive19190000
Mixed14014000
Negative14001400
Not counted26000260
Documentation21000021
Outside this group89301629140
Every source GILD read, by the quarter it was published, as the field's time axis counts it. Documentation is dated by the day it was checked.
QuarterSources
Q1 20252
Q2 202526
Q3 202518
Q4 202521
Q1 202629
Q2 202644
Q3 202610
Q4 202612
Documentation, checked21

By sentiment

21 documentation pages check facts and are not counted; 89 sit outside this group.

Hover a mark for a quick look, click it or press Enter to open its source.Tap a mark to open its source, then step to its neighbors with Previous and Next.

What practitioners praise

Top praise of 3. Each mark is a source on it; filled marks praise it.

  1. Model Choice6 of 7 sources on it praise it

Most common concerns

Top concern of 4. Each mark is a source on it; filled marks raise it.

  1. Usage / Cost11 of 16 sources on it raise it as a concern
All 183 sources behind these findings
  1. Models & PricingCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 28, 2026
  2. Team PricingCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 28, 2026
  3. Team DashboardCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 28, 2026
  4. Post on X: a cloud agent burned through UltraDarth (@darthnugget), X user (self-described: Solo, Cursor Ultra with cloud agents), X post, published Oct 27, 2026
  5. Post on X: Cursor cuts autonomous runs shortAryan Iyappan (@aryaniyaps), X user (self-described: Solo), X post, published Oct 27, 2026
  6. Comment on Hacker News: tooling is not a moat for developersnrclark, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Solo developer), Hacker News comment, published Oct 27, 2026
  7. Comment on r/cursor: Ultra credit wording removedusernamedotjs, Reddit r/cursor commenter on the Ultra plan (self-described: Solo, Claude models on Ultra), Reddit comment, published Oct 26, 2026
  8. Help me understand my token usageliftershifter, Reddit r/cursor poster (self-described: Solo, Claude Opus 5.5 at 300k context), Reddit post, published Oct 26, 2026
  9. Comment on Hacker News: routing work to a cheaper modelboogiefromzk, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Solo), Hacker News comment, published Oct 26, 2026
  10. Cursor Ultra "Cursor Models" finished in one weekSmart-Apartment-4089, Reddit r/cursor poster on Cursor Ultra (self-described: Solo, about 30 code reviews on Grok 4.7), Reddit post, published Oct 26, 2026
  11. Post on X: side-tracking burned a third of the monthredgreenblue (@redgreenbl35768), X user (self-described: Solo), X post, published Oct 25, 2026
  12. The US$20 plan on Composer and Auto on r/cursorInitial_Promotion511, Reddit r/cursor poster (self-described: Solo daily development), Reddit post, published Oct 24, 2026
  13. Comment on r/cursor: credits paid for, not receivedPewDiePwnn, Reddit r/cursor commenter (self-described: Solo, bought credits), Reddit comment, published Oct 23, 2026
  14. Post on X: a day with Cursor on PremiumMarkH (@markh137), X user (self-described: Solo, Cursor Premium), X post, published Oct 23, 2026
  15. Legacy Ultra bill on r/cursorchrislonardo, Reddit r/cursor poster on the legacy Ultra plan (self-described: Solo, heavy use on the legacy US$200 Ultra plan), Reddit post, published Oct 22, 2026
  16. Cursor RouterCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  17. AgentCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  18. Plan ModeCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  19. Agent SecurityCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  20. RulesCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  21. HooksCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  22. Cloud AgentsCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  23. Cloud Agents security overviewCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  24. BugbotCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  25. Agent ReviewCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  26. Cursor CLICursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  27. Privacy and Data GovernanceCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  28. Usage AnalyticsCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  29. SSOCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  30. VS Code MigrationCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  31. JetBrainsCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  32. OriginCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  33. SecurityCursor (Official), Product documentation, checked Oct 12, 2026
  34. Comment on: Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXAnamon, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Employer trialed every major provider, then voted), Hacker News comment, published Aug 31, 2026
  35. Comment on: Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXcharrondev, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Uses Cursor at work and for personal projects), Hacker News comment, published Aug 29, 2026
  36. Comment on: Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXrippeltippel, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Aug 29, 2026
  37. Comment on: Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXfy20, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Aug 29, 2026
  38. Comment on: Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceXzxspectrum1982, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company moved devs from Cursor to Claude and Codex direct), Hacker News comment, published Aug 29, 2026
  39. How Superhuman Scaled AI Coding Agents Across Their Entire Eng OrgYaroslav (Yarik), tech lead for the coding-agent rollout, Superhuman (self-described: Superhuman, formerly Grammarly, engineering organization), Conference talk video, published Aug 18, 2026
  40. Comment on: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV exportjkukul, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Aug 1, 2026
  41. Comment on: Show HN: How well do you use Claude Code?tdu01, Hacker News commenter who leads a team (self-described: Leads a team of senior engineers on Cursor), Hacker News comment, published Jul 25, 2026
  42. Cursor IDE force enabling Grok 4.5 and setting as default model, regardless of my initial selectionZak Thompson, developer at an organization with an approved model list (self-described: Organization that has not approved Grok), Cursor forum post, published Jul 22, 2026
  43. Reply in: Legacy Individual Plan, Max Mode RequiredJovan (jovanvel), early Cursor power user who brought colleagues onto Cursor (self-described: Brought over 30 people, mostly from their company, onto Cursor), Cursor forum post, published Jul 7, 2026
  44. 2x the power users: How structured AI training scaled developer productivityMichael Redding, Principal Product Manager, presenting with Jeff Davis, VP of Core Infrastructure at Indeed (Indeed engineering, more than 2,000 engineers), Conference session recording, DX Annual (Engineering Enablement podcast), published Jun 29, 2026
  45. Uber's journey of measuring AI impact on developer productivityAbhishek Tibrewal, Uber, presenting with Ty Smith at DX Annual (self-described: Uber engineering organization), Conference session recording, Engineering Enablement podcast (DX), published Jun 22, 2026
  46. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bmjrbrennan, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Discourse), Hacker News comment, published Jun 17, 2026
  47. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Besalman, Hacker News commenter (self-described: 20,000-employee company with a tech footprint), Hacker News comment, published Jun 17, 2026
  48. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bpresentation, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 17, 2026
  49. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Blebed2045, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 17, 2026
  50. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bsanex, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  51. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Btrial3, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Large employer that dropped Cursor for Claude), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  52. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Brcleveng, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  53. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Blaurels-marts, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company-issued Cursor license), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  54. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bjoshgachnang, Hacker News commenter (self-described: CTO of Flourish Health, set the team up on Cursor), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  55. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bbazzargh, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Team that pays the bills for Claude, Cursor, GPT agents and Bedrock), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  56. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bvadepaysa, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  57. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bghshephard, Hacker News commenter (self-described: SRE using Cursor 8+ hours a day at work), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  58. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Bdarklinear, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Data and platform engineering at work), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  59. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Brob74, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company went all in on Cursor and disabled JetBrains AI), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  60. Comment on: SpaceX to buy Cursor for US$60Brenjimen, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Machine learning work), Hacker News comment, published Jun 16, 2026
  61. Doubling the productivity of your engineering team using AIBrian Scanlan, Senior Principal Systems Engineer at Intercom (Intercom R&D organization), Conference session recording, DX Annual (Engineering Enablement podcast), published Jun 15, 2026
  62. From AI experiments to organizational shift: Lessons from Mercari's transformationMichael Galloway, leads Platform Engineering at Mercari (Company-wide AI adoption mandate across engineering and other functions), Conference session recording, DX Annual (Engineering Enablement podcast), published Jun 15, 2026
  63. I stopped using Cursor to write code, and that's when it actually became usefulYash Patel, former software engineer and tech writer at XDA Developers (self-described: Own development projects), First-person review column, XDA Developers, published Jun 14, 2026
  64. Comment on: AI coding at home without going brokedpcan, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 13, 2026
  65. Comment on: Show HN: Boxes.dev: ditch localhost; run Claude Code and Codex in the cloudphsource, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company on Cursor), Hacker News comment, published Jun 4, 2026
  66. Comment on: Cursor Introduces Composer 2.5jorl17, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Python, Bash and Docker work), Hacker News comment, published May 19, 2026
  67. Comment on: Cursor Introduces Composer 2.5enraged_camel, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published May 19, 2026
  68. Comment on: Cursor Introduces Composer 2.5darkwi11ow, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Software engineer in Kyiv), Hacker News comment, published May 18, 2026
  69. Comment on: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%fourseventy, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company where marketing uses Cursor web agents), Hacker News comment, published May 5, 2026
  70. Latent Space: Applied Intuition with Peter LudwigPeter Ludwig, co-founder and chief technology officer, Applied Intuition (self-described: Applied Intuition, company-wide tool use with an internal adoption leaderboard), Podcast episode with publisher transcript, published Apr 27, 2026
  71. An AI Agent Just Destroyed Our Production Data. It Confessed in Writing.Jeremy Crane, founder and CEO of PocketOS (self-described: Software for car rental businesses; Cursor agent with Railway infrastructure), X post, published Apr 25, 2026
  72. Comment on: SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for US$60Bnewtwilly, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Employer pays for Cursor and a ChatGPT Enterprise seat), Hacker News comment, published Apr 22, 2026
  73. Latent Space: Shopify with Mikhail ParakhinMikhail Parakhin, chief technology officer, Shopify (self-described: Shopify, every employee chooses their coding tool), Podcast episode with publisher transcript, published Apr 22, 2026
  74. Cursor | Technology Radar | ThoughtworksThoughtworks Technology Radar, April 2026 edition (Global software consultancy delivery teams), Technology Radar assessment, Thoughtworks, published Apr 15, 2026
  75. Comment on: Cursor 3dominicholmes, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Team of heavy Conductor users running parallel agents), Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  76. Comment on: Cursor 3verelo, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  77. Comment on: Cursor 3athoscouto, Hacker News commenter (self-described: On a Cursor enterprise plan), Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  78. Comment on: Cursor 3dirtbag__dad, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Team weighing Cursor spend against hiring an engineer), Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  79. Comment on: Cursor 3ok_dad, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  80. Comment on: Cursor 3DeathArrow, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Uses the $20 plan at work and at home), Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  81. Comment on: Cursor 3mc_escher, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  82. Comment on: Cursor 3Jcampuzano2, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company on an enterprise contract), Hacker News comment, published Apr 3, 2026
  83. Comment on: Cursor 3seamossfet, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Works on CAD for drug discovery), Hacker News comment, published Apr 2, 2026
  84. Comment on: Cursor 3rvshchwl, product manager, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Apr 2, 2026
  85. Comment on: Cursor 3simplyluke, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Large production codebase), Hacker News comment, published Apr 2, 2026
  86. Comment on: Cursor 3nu11ptr, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Apr 2, 2026
  87. Comment on: Cursor 3Gimpei, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Apr 2, 2026
  88. Comment on: Cook: A simple CLI for orchestrating Claude Codegenthree, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Employer tracks Cursor usage), Hacker News comment, published Mar 19, 2026
  89. Cursor billed us US$450 for a seat that existed for secondsprimex, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Team on a Cursor Teams plan), Hacker News thread, published Mar 14, 2026
  90. Comment on: Shall I implement it? Nobushido, Hacker News commenter who sets tool policy at their company (self-described: Co-founder of SkipUp, who barred Cursor at the company), Hacker News comment, published Mar 12, 2026
  91. I Canceled My Cursor Subscription After a Year. Here's Why.Eric Roby, backend engineer and educator (self-described: Own backend projects), Newsletter, Brain Bytes (Substack), published Mar 10, 2026
  92. How Uber uses AI for development: inside lookTy Smith, Principal Engineer, and Anshu Chada, Director of Engineering at Uber (self-described: Uber engineering, about 3,000 people in the tech function), Newsletter deepdive, The Pragmatic Engineer, published Mar 10, 2026
  93. AI Tooling for Software Engineers in 2026Gergely Orosz, author of The Pragmatic Engineer (self-described: Reader survey of software engineers and engineering leaders), Independent developer survey, The Pragmatic Engineer, published Mar 3, 2026
  94. This week on How I AI: 5 OpenClaw agents run my home, finances, and code & How Coinbase scaled AI to 1,000+ engineersChintan Turakhia, leads engineering at Coinbase (Coinbase engineering organization of more than 1,000 engineers), Podcast episode show notes, How I AI (Lenny's Newsletter), published Mar 2, 2026
  95. Team Seat Management Best Practices: How Do You Handle Member Changes?songcj, admin of an annual Cursor Team plan (self-described: Annual Team plan with 86 seats), Cursor forum post, published Feb 26, 2026
  96. Reply in: Anyone here using cursor with a team? what's been the hardest part?valentinoPereira, member of a team on a Cursor team plan (self-described: Team plan), Cursor forum post, published Feb 18, 2026
  97. Reply in: Anyone here using cursor with a team? what's been the hardest part?Antoine Cormouls, developer at a company using Cursor on a large monorepo (self-described: Company team on a huge monorepo, trunk-based development), Cursor forum post, published Feb 18, 2026
  98. Cursor Keeps Auto-Accepting Its Own ChangesIfe (ifedapoolarewaju), Cursor user (self-described: Multi-root workspace), Cursor forum post, published Feb 18, 2026
  99. Reply in: Anyone here using cursor with a team? what's been the hardest part?Mark Harrison, member of a team on Cursor Pro (self-described: Small team, most members on Cursor Pro with annual renewals), Cursor forum post, published Feb 17, 2026
  100. Bugbot doesn't catch all issues on first pass: multiple review cycles neededLuisa, Bugbot user (self-described: Pull request review), Cursor forum post, published Feb 10, 2026
  101. Why we're moving from Cursor to Claude Code (and why you should too)Flavien, Lead Frontend Developer (self-described: Frontend team running client and in-house projects), Personal blog post, 56kode, published Feb 10, 2026
  102. Minions: Stripe's one-shot, end-to-end coding agentsAlistair Gray, software engineer at Stripe (Stripe engineering, internal unattended coding agents), Company engineering blog post, Stripe Dot Dev Blog, published Feb 9, 2026
  103. Comment on: We mourn our craftcmiles74, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Java projects, team with junior engineers), Hacker News comment, published Feb 7, 2026
  104. Comment on: Ask HN: Has your whole engineering team gone big into AI coding? How's it going?znq, SIROC venture studio (self-described: SIROC, 18-person venture studio), Hacker News comment, published Feb 5, 2026
  105. Comment on: Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoftinterestpiqued, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Firmware team), Hacker News comment, published Feb 2, 2026
  106. Cursor at Grab: Adoption and impactAkshay Misra and Karmi Nguyen, engineering blog authors at Grab (Grab engineering, Southeast Asian superapp; Cursor since late 2024 beside other tools), Company engineering blog post, Grab Tech, published Jan 29, 2026
  107. Comment on: There is an AI code review bubbledisillusionist, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company that ran a multi-week Greptile trial), Hacker News comment, published Jan 26, 2026
  108. Speed at the Cost of Quality: How Cursor AI Increases Short-Term Velocity and Long-Term Complexity in Open-Source ProjectsHao He, Courtney Miller, Shyam Agarwal, Christian Kästner and Bogdan Vasilescu, Carnegie Mellon University (self-described: 806 open-source GitHub projects that adopted Cursor between January 2024 and March 2025), Research paper, arXiv (MSR 2026), published Jan 26, 2026
  109. Cloud Agents + Multiple Repositories (non-monorepo setup)Prasad Subrahmanya, Cloud agents user (self-described: Codebase split across frontend, backend, mobile and docs repositories), Cursor forum post, published Jan 22, 2026
  110. How Cursor boosted my productivity in 2025Gagandeep Singh, Senior Engineer at Branch International (self-described: Branch International, backend Ruby refactoring and rewrites; organization uses Copilot and Cursor), Personal blog post, Gagandeep's Blog (gagan93.me), published Jan 18, 2026
  111. Latent Space: Brex's AI Hail Mary, with James ReggioJames Reggio, chief technology officer, Brex (self-described: Brex, a few seats of several tools chosen by employees), Podcast episode with publisher transcript, published Jan 17, 2026
  112. I Stopped Using Cursor, Here's WhySage Choi, software engineer (self-described: Sage Choi's Substack newsletter), Personal blog post, Sage Choi (Substack), published Jan 9, 2026
  113. Cursor US$200 vs. Claude Max + Cursor: Usage Limits and Trade-offsemanuelgrammenos, Cursor user for two years (self-described: Cursor community forum, two years of use), Cursor forum post, published Jan 8, 2026
  114. AI Native Dev: What AI Engineering Looks Like at Meta, Coinbase, ServiceTitan and ThoughtWorksSepehr Khosravi, machine learning platform engineer, Coinbase (self-described: Coinbase, which tracks AI use per developer), Podcast episode video, published Jan 6, 2026
  115. Cursor Pro: Auto Mode "Unlimited" usage no longer feels unlimitedmikail (ju5ti5e), Cursor Pro subscriber (self-described: Cursor community forum, Pro plan), Cursor forum post, published Jan 5, 2026
  116. Vibe coding killed CursorAnton Morgunov, researcher and developer (self-described: Own research code and personal apps), Personal blog post, ischemist.com (Anton Morgunov), published Jan 1, 2026
  117. Comment on: Graphite is joining Cursorziml77, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Dec 19, 2025
  118. Comment on: Graphite is joining Cursorsantoriv, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Large enterprise company), Hacker News comment, published Dec 19, 2025
  119. Cursor Is Brilliant, And Here's Why I Still Hate Using ItShane Chang, full-stack engineer running an AI startup (self-described: Own startup, type-strict Python codebase), Personal blog post, Shane's Personal Blog (shanechang.com), published Dec 19, 2025
  120. How We Use AI Coding AgentsYK Sugi, Eventual engineering team (Eventual, maker of the Daft data engine; team split between Claude Code and Cursor), Company engineering blog post, Eventual, published Dec 15, 2025
  121. Running data-driven evaluations of AI engineering toolsLaura Tacho, host of the Engineering Enablement podcast at DX (Developer productivity research across DX customer companies), Podcast episode transcript, Engineering Enablement podcast (DX), published Dec 12, 2025
  122. Reply in: Stop Shipping Unstable BuildsStergios (StergiosDikos), developer on a team that accesses Claude through AWS Bedrock (self-described: Team using AWS Bedrock for Claude in Cursor), Cursor forum post, published Dec 9, 2025
  123. Why I Switched from Cursor to Claude Code (And Cut My AI Costs by 10x)Patrik Kelemen, founder of Namiru.ai (self-described: Own product development), Founder blog post, Namiru.ai blog, published Dec 9, 2025
  124. Stop Shipping Unstable BuildsHungHo (user129), Cursor user since the 0.x versions (self-described: Daily use, including remote work over SSH), Cursor forum post, published Nov 18, 2025
  125. Building AI-Powered Migration Tools: Compressing 4 Sprints Into 3 Days with Cursor, Windsurf, and ClaudeTripti Sheth, Senior Director of Software Engineering, Monitoring Cloud Notification Management, Salesforce (Migration tooling for 1,200 alert notification policies), Company engineering blog post, Salesforce Engineering, published Nov 17, 2025
  126. Cursor has literally changed my lifeEmi Buliga, solo startup developer (self-described: Solo startup, about 30k lines of code), Cursor forum post, published Nov 14, 2025
  127. Is there better tool out there than cursor?Antti Kojo, Cursor user (self-described: Software development), Cursor forum post, published Nov 12, 2025
  128. Visual indication that you are using Max Mode, spent a ton of money without noticing in Max ModeIgnacio Ferreira, Cursor Ultra subscriber (self-described: Linux), Cursor forum post, published Nov 12, 2025
  129. How Cursor AI Slashed Dashboard Migration Time 75% Across 240 QueriesLakshmi Dontamsetti, Senior Manager of Software Engineering for Mobile Performance at Salesforce (self-described: Salesforce Mobile Performance Engineering team, Splunk to Tableau migration), Engineering blog Q&A, Salesforce Engineering Blog, published Nov 5, 2025
  130. Reply in: 2.0, A step in the wrong directionAdrian (QTom), developer whose company provides AI coding tools (self-described: Company that provided a Claude Max 20x plan), Cursor forum post, published Nov 2, 2025
  131. 2.0: A step in the wrong directionJohn Collins, Cursor user (self-described: Own projects), Cursor forum post, published Oct 30, 2025
  132. Comment on: Composer: Building a fast frontier model with RLNitpickLawyer, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Oct 30, 2025
  133. I made a dashboard to track actual costs after Sept 15 pricinghime, Cursor user and dashboard author (self-described: Cursor community forum, individual account), Cursor forum post, published Oct 19, 2025
  134. Why the push for Agentic when models can barely follow a single simple instruction?singularityskynet, Cursor user (self-described: Go codebase), Cursor forum post, published Oct 13, 2025
  135. Comment on: Two things LLM coding agents are still bad atbunderbunder, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Team where management mandated Cursor), Hacker News comment, published Oct 9, 2025
  136. I played 1,000 hands of online poker and built a web app with Cursor AIReilly Chase, independent builder (self-described: Solo, Laravel side project), Personal blog post, blog.rchase.com, published Oct 8, 2025
  137. Comment on: Cursor 1.7saltyoldman, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company standardized on Cursor), Hacker News comment, published Oct 1, 2025
  138. How AI Tools Cut Customer Escalation Time: From Days of Manual Work to MinutesKristin Foss, VP of Software Engineering for Customer Centric Engineering at Salesforce (Salesforce Customer Centric Engineering, 180 engineers handling customer escalations), Company engineering blog post, Salesforce Engineering, published Sep 29, 2025
  139. How tech companies measure the impact of AI on software developmentSuhail Patel, leads the platform teams at Monzo Bank (self-described: Regulated UK neobank, platform engineering), Newsletter interview, The Pragmatic Engineer, published Sep 16, 2025
  140. Building Sustainable Enterprise AI Adoption: Cultural Strategies That Achieved 95% Developer EngagementScott Yancey, EVP of Software Engineering at Salesforce (self-described: Salesforce, teams working in the Core monolith), Engineering blog Q&A, Salesforce Engineering Blog, published Sep 8, 2025
  141. Automatic pull request reviewing with Cursor's BugbotPeter Eysermans, engineer at madewithlove (self-described: Small engineering team at a software consultancy), Engineering blog post, madewithlove blog, published Sep 2, 2025
  142. X post: "Continuing the journey of optimal LLM-assisted coding experience"Andrej Karpathy, AI researcher and former Director of AI at Tesla (self-described: Own coding projects), X post, published Aug 24, 2025
  143. Why I switched from Cursor to Claude CodeDaniel Moka, software engineer and newsletter author (self-described: Their development team), Newsletter, Craft Better Software (Substack), published Aug 23, 2025
  144. How Cursor AI Cut Legacy Code Coverage Time by 85%Rachna Singh, Senior Director of Software Engineering, Einstein Activity Capture, Salesforce (Legacy Java, Scala and Kotlin repositories under an 80% coverage mandate), Company engineering blog post, Salesforce Engineering, published Aug 18, 2025
  145. Testing AI coding agents (2025): Cursor vs. Claude, OpenAI, and GeminiMitch Alderson, software engineer writing on the Render blog (self-described: Production codebases at Render and a client site), Independent benchmark, Render blog, published Aug 12, 2025
  146. Comment on: Cursor CLIbenbayard, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Company using Cursor as its main tool for months), Hacker News comment, published Aug 8, 2025
  147. AgentFlayer: When a Jira Ticket Can Steal Your SecretsMarina Simakov, Zenity Labs (Security research on Cursor with the Jira MCP server in auto-run mode), Independent security research, Zenity Labs blog, published Aug 1, 2025
  148. Unpacking METR's findings: Does AI slow developers down?Quentin Anthony, METR study participant working on GPT-NeoX (self-described: Open source GPT-NeoX development), Podcast episode, Engineering Enablement podcast (DX), published Aug 1, 2025
  149. How AI Test Automation Cut Developer Productivity Bottlenecks by 30% at ScaleManoj Vaitla, senior engineer at Salesforce (Salesforce Platform Quality Engineering, triage for 6 million daily tests), Company engineering blog post, Salesforce Engineering, published Jul 30, 2025
  150. Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer ProductivityMETR, independent AI research nonprofit (self-described: 16 experienced open-source developers on 246 real issues in their own repositories), Research paper, arXiv (METR randomized controlled trial), published Jul 25, 2025
  151. My Participation in the METR AI Productivity StudyDomenic Denicola, sole active maintainer of jsdom (self-described: jsdom, an open source codebase of about 1 million lines, in a randomized study), Personal blog post, domenic.me, published Jul 15, 2025
  152. How I use Claude Code (+ my best tips)Steve Sewell, co-founder and CEO of Builder.io (Builder.io codebase, including an 18,000-line React component), Company blog post, Builder.io blog, published Jul 11, 2025
  153. Comment on: Measuring the impact of AI on experienced open-source developer productivitypaulmist, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jul 10, 2025
  154. Comment on: Measuring the impact of AI on experienced open-source developer productivitycadamsdotcom, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jul 10, 2025
  155. Comment on: Clarifying our pricingmellosouls, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jul 5, 2025
  156. Boosting Developer Productivity with AI: Faster Dashboards, Automated Testing, and 70% Less Setup TimeGeeta Shankar, performance engineer at Salesforce (Salesforce Code Builder performance team, browser IDE load and regression testing), Company engineering blog post, Salesforce Engineering, published Jun 25, 2025
  157. How Salesforce Engineering Operationalized AI Productivity at ScaleVivienne Wei, with Geeta Shankar and Shiva Nimmagadda, Salesforce Engineering (self-described: Salesforce Engineering, six engineering clouds), Engineering blog post, Salesforce Engineering Blog, published Jun 23, 2025
  158. Why I stopped using cursorAndres Crucetta, software developer (self-described: Work tickets and personal programming), Personal blog post, andresc.bearblog.dev, published Jun 20, 2025
  159. Transcript: 'How Two Engineers Ship Like a Team of 15 With AI Agents'Kieran Klaassen, general manager of Cora at Every (Two-engineer team building Cora, an AI email product at Every), Podcast episode transcript, AI & I (Every), published Jun 11, 2025
  160. Comment on: Cursor 1.0ai_assisted_dev, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Own services with paying customers), Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  161. Comment on: Cursor 1.0dkersten, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  162. Comment on: Cursor 1.0luckyandroid, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  163. Comment on: Cursor 1.0jjice, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  164. Comment on: Cursor 1.0adastra22, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  165. Comment on: Cursor 1.0jimrandomh, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  166. Comment on: Cursor 1.0cmrx64, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Solo, Rust distributed-systems components), Hacker News comment, published Jun 5, 2025
  167. Comment on: Cursor 1.0nsingh2, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published Jun 4, 2025
  168. How Jit overcame developer resistance to shift to CursorDaniel Koch, vice president of engineering at Jit (self-described: Jit engineering team, moved from JetBrains IDEs to Cursor), Article, LeadDev, published May 15, 2025
  169. After months of coding with LLMs, I'm going back to using my brainAlberto Fortin, software engineer of 15 years and SaaS founder (self-described: Solo SaaS, rewrite from PHP and MySQL to Go and ClickHouse), Personal blog post, albertofortin.com, published May 15, 2025
  170. Comment on: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?fastball, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Engineer at Known, co-founder of Supernotes), Hacker News comment, published May 12, 2025
  171. Comment on: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?whywhywhywhy, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published May 12, 2025
  172. Comment on: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?rco8786, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published May 12, 2025
  173. Comment on: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?nlh, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Self-taught developer and full-time rare coin dealer), Hacker News comment, published May 12, 2025
  174. Comment on: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?chironjit, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published May 12, 2025
  175. Comment on: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?w4, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published May 12, 2025
  176. Comment on: Notes on rolling out Cursor and Claude Codehallh, Hacker News commenter, self-described, Hacker News comment, published May 8, 2025
  177. Nobody Codes Here Anymore: Notes on rolling out Cursor and Claude CodeAlex Ghiculescu, co-founder of Tanda (self-described: Tanda, mature Ruby on Rails SaaS codebase, about 40 developers), Newsletter, Alex Ghiculescu's Newsletter (Substack), published Apr 29, 2025
  178. X post: "One very surprising thing I'm noticing"Gergely Orosz, author of The Pragmatic Engineer, formerly at Uber and Skype (self-described: Own side projects and APIs), X post, published Apr 23, 2025
  179. Comment on: An update to our pricingtartieret, Hacker News commenter (self-described: CTO at Panevo; company standardized on Windsurf, devs on WSL), Hacker News comment, published Apr 22, 2025
  180. Comment on: Cursor IDE support hallucinates lockout policy, causes user cancellationseranation, Hacker News commenter (self-described: Enterprise customer who moved their whole team to Cursor), Hacker News comment, published Apr 16, 2025
  181. People Who Hype Cursor Usually Lack Technical Skillssmallyu, Go developer (self-described: Work codebase, Go and smart contracts), Personal blog post, smallyu's Blog (en.smallyu.net), published Apr 12, 2025
  182. X post: "There's a new kind of coding I call vibe coding"Andrej Karpathy, AI researcher and former Director of AI at Tesla (self-described: Throwaway weekend projects), X post, published Feb 2, 2025
  183. Using LLMs and Cursor to become a finisherZohaib Rauf, engineering manager writing about their side projects (self-described: Solo, greenfield side projects), Personal blog post, zohaib.me, published Jan 2, 2025

Jan 2025 to Oct 2026.

162 sources from practitioners, by month and sentiment.

The full readExplore all Cursor Signals7 praise themes, 6 concerns, 5 points of agreement and 3 disagreements across all three groups, with all 183 sources open to inspect.

Where It Fits

Where does Cursor belong in the stack?

Open Where It Fits: the Stack Field and the full map

Cursor is Core across Build, supports Plan and Validate, and touches Ship and Operate.

Business area
Product & Engineering
Function
Software Development
Operating stack
Agentic Software Development
Primary role
AI-Native Editor & Coding Agent
Cursor beside the rest of its stackThe Stack Field, every product on every layer
FootprintCursor across the Agentic Software Development stack. Bar height is its role on each layer.

  1. Plan

    1. Work planning: Supports

      Work planning, supports. Plan Mode researches the codebase and produces an editable plan before code is written; planning stays in the team's tracker.

  2. Build

    1. Codebase context: Core

      Codebase context, core. Cursor's agent searches the repository with an index built on the developer's machine and applies project rules for conventions.

    2. Coding: Core

      Coding, core. Cursor's primary role is coding implementation: writing and changing repository code from the editor, CLI, or a cloud agent.

    3. Agent runtime: Core

      Agent runtime, core. The Cursor editor, built on the VS Code codebase, is where developers steer, review, and accept agent work. The CLI and cloud agents extend it.

    4. Tool execution: Supports

      Tool execution, supports. Cursor's agent can run terminal commands and call MCP tools, with approval required by default, but tool orchestration is not its center.

  3. Validate

    1. Debugging: Supports

      Debugging, supports. Cursor's agent can investigate failures using repository context and terminal output inside the editor.

    2. Testing: Supports

      Testing, supports. Cursor's agent can write and run tests and help verify changes, but it does not replace dedicated testing infrastructure.

    3. Code review: Supports

      Code review, supports. Bugbot reviews pull requests for bugs, security issues, and code quality problems. Final review ownership stays with the engineering team.

    4. Application security: Touches

      Application security, touches. Bugbot flags security issues in pull requests, but Cursor is not a dedicated application-security platform.

  4. Ship

    1. Source control: Touches

      Source control, touches. Cursor connects to Git hosts for cloud agents and Bugbot. Origin, its own code hosting, is in early beta, so Cursor is not yet the source-control system of record.

    2. CI/CD: Touches

      CI/CD, touches. The Cursor CLI can run in scripts and CI pipelines; delivery stays in the team's CI/CD.

  5. Operate

    1. Observability: Touches

      Observability, touches. Cursor can help investigate production issues when given the relevant context, but it does not provide observability itself.

Market mapThe layers Cursor covers, and who else owns each one.

  1. Codebase context & intelligence

    CoreBuild

  2. Coding & implementation

    CoreBuild

  3. Agent interface & developer runtime

    CoreBuild

  4. Work planning & task decomposition

    SupportsPlan

  5. Tool execution & integrations

    SupportsBuild

7 more layers on the full map. Core, Supports and Touches describe coverage. They say nothing about quality.

Models

Which models run in Cursor?

The current releases GILD tracks that public sources record running in Cursor. Each model's page charts its public benchmark scores.

  1. Claude Fable 5.1Claude Fable release for demanding reasoning and long-horizon agentic work, with stronger agentic coding, multistep research, and document, spreadsheet, and slide work.Claude FableBenchmarks
  2. Claude Sonnet 5.5A Claude Sonnet release for everyday agentic, coding, and knowledge work.Claude SonnetBenchmarks
  3. Gemini 3.1 Pro PreviewA preview Gemini Pro release for advanced reasoning and multimodal work.Gemini ProBenchmarks
  4. Gemini 4 ArgonGoogle's Gemini 4 Argon release for advanced reasoning and multimodal work. Google announced it on September 30, 2026 as a limited rollout to cyber defenders in its Fairwind Program; it has been generally available on the Gemini API and Agent Platform since October 13, 2026.Gemini ProBenchmarks
  5. GPT-5.4OpenAI's GPT-5.4 model for coding and professional work, with text and image input. API model gpt-5.4 (snapshot gpt-5.4-2026-03-05) at US$2.50 per million input tokens and US$15 per million output tokens, with a 1,050,000-token context window; prompts over 272K input tokens cost more. Also in Cursor; GitHub Copilot dropped it on October 19, 2026.GPT-5Benchmarks
  6. GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI's GPT-5.6 flagship model for complex professional work, with text and image input. API model gpt-5.6-sol at US$4 per million input tokens and US$20 per million output tokens, with a 1,050,000-token context window and 128,000 output tokens; also in GitHub Copilot and Cursor.GPT SolBenchmarks
  7. Grok 4.5xAI's Grok release for coding, agentic tasks and knowledge work, which xAI's release notes credit to SpaceXSI. API model grok-4.5 with a 500K-token context window at US$2 per million input tokens and US$6 per million output tokens below 200K prompt tokens, twice that above; also in Cursor, and listed in GitHub Copilot although GitHub announced its Copilot deprecation for October 19, 2026. xAI's models page points code and other text work to Grok 4.7.GrokBenchmarks
  8. Grok 4.6xAI's Grok release for coding, agentic tasks and knowledge work, which xAI's release notes credit to SpaceXSI. API model grok-4.6 with a 500K-token context window at US$2 per million input tokens and US$6 per million output tokens below 200K prompt tokens, twice that above; also on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry (preview), and in GitHub Copilot and Cursor. xAI's models page points code and other text work to Grok 4.7.GrokBenchmarks
  9. Grok 4.7xAI's Grok release for agentic coding and multistep work. API model grok-4.7, with a 500K-token context window on the xAI API, Microsoft Foundry, and OpenRouter, and 524,288 tokens on Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud.GrokBenchmarks

More on Cursor

  1. GILD ReviewGILD's evaluation, with the buying facts
  2. Research3 pieces
  3. Guides4 guides
  4. Operator Insights16 operator accounts
  5. Where It FitsOn the Agentic Software Development stack
  6. Related Products8 products