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The Stack / Coding
Cursor
03 CreationStill yes for anyone coding weekly — Cursor remains the best AI-in-the-editor experience. But the buy changed on October 12, 2026: Cursor is now sold as tiers of The X Subscription, with one usage pool shared with Grok. Plus at $8 is Grok-only; Claude and other third-party models need Premium at $30 and bill separately at API list price. If your workflow routes to Claude, budget $30 plus usage, or keep a legacy Pro plan while it lasts.
The job in the stack
The hands-on coding seat: an editor where AI agents write, refactor, and navigate the codebase with you.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Limited agent and Chat requests; also limited Grok chat, Imagine and Build |
| Plus | $8/mo | Grok models only in Cursor. One usage pool shared with Grok chat, Imagine, Build and Grok API access; X checkmark and creator tools included |
| Premium | $30/mo | 4x Plus usage. Cloud agents and automations, code hosting via Origin, Bugbot code reviews, Grok Bot. Third-party models (Claude, Gemini, etc.) available but billed separately at API list price |
| Super | $100/mo | 15x Plus usage plus priority model access at peak times |
| Ultra | $200/mo | 50x Plus usage plus earliest access to new products and models |
| Teams | $30+/user/mo | Seat tiers at 4x–50x Plus usage; centralized billing, SSO, usage analytics, team privacy settings, team marketplace for rules/skills/plugins |
| Legacy Pro / Pro+ / Ultra / Teams | $20 / $60 / $200 / $40 | No longer sold to new customers since Oct 12, 2026. Existing subscribers keep plan, price and features unless they switch in billing settings (prorated refund on switching) |
Pricing verified 2026-10-14. Plans change — the source of truth is Cursor's own pricing page.
Models & versions
- Grok 4.7 Released September 21, 2026 — Cursor calls it its most capable model for long-running coding and knowledge work. Trained with SpaceXAI; in the first-party pool on paid plans. Third-party coverage reports it serves at Grok 4.6's price ($2/M in, $6/M out); Cursor's post doesn't state rates
- Grok 4.6 Released August 12, 2026 with SpaceXAI, built for long-running agents and visual/interactive work. $2/M in, $6/M out; the fast variant costs double
- Grok 4.5 Released July 8, 2026 — the first model Cursor trained jointly with SpaceXAI. Superseded by 4.6 and 4.7
- Composer 2.5 Cursor's smaller first-party coding model — a different weight class from Grok, and Cursor says models of this size keep shipping
- Agent + bots Multi-file agentic editing with frontier models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) alongside the first-party pool. Teams and Enterprise add Rollouts (per-environment deploy health) and Security Review (exploitable-bug comments on every PR), both Sept 23, 2026. Since Oct 6 the iOS app can view and reply to local agents running on your computer
The honest read
What works
- + Best-in-class tab completion — the daily 90% of AI coding value
- + Agent mode handles multi-file changes with reviewable diffs
- + Model-agnostic on Premium and up: route to Claude, Gemini, or Grok per task (third-party models billed at API list price)
What breaks
- − Since Oct 12, 2026 the $8 Plus tier is Grok-only, and on every tier third-party models like Claude bill on top of the subscription at API list price — the old $20 Pro with frontier models included is gone for new buyers
- − Auto is no longer flat-rate: since August 24, 2026 every Auto request bills at the list price of whichever model it routes to, so heavy Auto use costs more — and the dollar size of the usage pools isn't published on the pricing page
- − Pricing structure has churned repeatedly — expect it to move again
- − VS Code fork means occasional extension lag behind upstream
- − The SpaceX acquisition closed August 14, 2026 — Cursor is now a wholly owned subsidiary under SpaceX's new SpaceXAI division. The trust boundary is no longer hypothetical: check your privacy mode settings before pointing it at a sensitive codebase
- − OpenAI is pulling its models from Cursor over the SpaceX acquisition — access ends November 12, 2026. Cursor's own CEO says OpenAI models are ~5% of usage, and Anthropic has committed to more Claude compute in Cursor, so the practical impact is small, but if your workflow specifically routes to GPT models in Agent mode, plan the switch before mid-November
Use it for
- →Developers living in an editor daily
- →Operators building internal tools who want AI pair-programming
- →Teams standardizing one AI coding environment
Skip it if
- ×You work terminal-first — Claude Code may fit tighter
- ×You code occasionally — Copilot's $10 plan is the cheaper on-ramp, and Cursor's $8 Plus locks you to Grok models
Questions operators ask
?Cursor or GitHub Copilot?
Cursor if the editor is your home and you want agentic multi-file work. Copilot if you want cheap, unlimited completions inside stock VS Code. Full comparison on the compare page.
?Which Cursor plan should I buy now?
If Grok models are enough, Plus at $8 is the cheapest real seat. If you want Claude or Gemini in Agent mode, Premium at $30 is the floor, and those models bill on top at API list price. Already on Pro at $20? You keep it until you switch — check what your Claude usage would cost on Premium before you move.
?Do I need an X account to use Cursor?
Cursor plans are now sold by X Subscription Corp. and bundle X Premium features with Grok. The pricing page says to buy only through the official site. Treat the bundle as a billing change, not a reason to move your coding workflow.
What changed
- Real drift. cursor.com/pricing (rendered) now sells The X Subscription tiers, launched Oct 12, 2026: Free, Plus $8 (Grok models only), Premium $30 (4x Plus; cloud agents, Origin code hosting, Bugbot, Grok Bot; third-party models at API list price, billed separately), Super $100 (15x), Ultra $200 (50x), Teams $30+/user, Enterprise custom. One usage pool is shared across Cursor and Grok. Per x.ai, existing Pro/Pro+/Ultra/Teams subscribers keep their plans unless they switch. Rewrote pricing, verdict, pros, cons, skip-if and FAQ, plus the Cursor pricing lines in cursor-vs-github-copilot, cursor-vs-replit, devin-vs-cursor, how-to-choose-an-ai-coding-tool and the best-ai-coding-tools rationale.
- Freshness sweep. cursor.com/pricing re-checked: Hobby free, Pro $20, Teams $40/user, Enterprise custom — unchanged. The page now groups Pro/Pro+/Ultra under one card and no longer prints the $60/$200 figures or Grok version numbers, so Pro+ and Ultra prices are carried from Sept 21. Model list was stale: it still led with Grok 4.5. Added Grok 4.6 (Aug 12, $2/$6, fast 2x) and Grok 4.7 (Sept 21, Cursor's most capable model) from Cursor's own blog posts. Also from the changelog: Rollouts and Security Review bots for Teams/Enterprise (Sept 23) and iOS remote control of local agents (Oct 6). Prose in cursor-vs-replit, cursor-vs-github-copilot and best-ai-coding-tools moved from Grok 4.5 to 4.7. The OpenAI model shutoff (proposed Nov 12) is still pending; no update found.
- Freshness + news sweep. Individual ladder re-verified on cursor.com/pricing: Hobby free, Pro $20, Pro+ $60 (3x Pro agent limits), Ultra $200 (20x), 20% off yearly. Hobby's old '2,000 completions, 50 slow premium requests' line is gone from the page; it now reads limited Agent requests plus Composer access, and the note is corrected. News: on August 24, 2026 Cursor ended flat-rate Auto — each Auto request now bills at the list price of the routed model against the Cursor Models or Other Models pool, and Enterprise's grace period on legacy flat Auto closed September 7. That comes from several outlets quoting Cursor's customer email; Cursor's pricing page doesn't mention it. Teams pricing not re-checked this pass.
- NEWS SCAN: OpenAI notified SpaceX on Aug 28, 2026 that it will wind down its contract supplying OpenAI models to Cursor, shutoff date Nov 12, 2026 — cited Musk-entity history of breaking model-usage contracts (Twitter, xAI) as the reason it can't trust SpaceX's terms-of-service compliance. Cursor's CEO put OpenAI models at ~5% of customer usage; Anthropic's Tom Brown said Anthropic will increase Claude compute for Cursor. Pricing ladder unchanged. Added as a cons item — flag it for anyone whose Agent routing depends on GPT models specifically.
- News scan: the SpaceX acquisition closed August 14, 2026 (all-stock, $60B) — Cursor now operates as a subsidiary under SpaceX's new SpaceXAI division with access to the Colossus supercomputer; a Grok Bot beta (persistent, always-on agent teammates) has shipped. Separately, Cursor launched Origin on August 18 — a first-party code-hosting platform (repos, PR review, browser editing) positioned against GitHub amid GitHub's own reliability issues. Cons rewritten: the acquisition is done, not pending. Pricing ladder unchanged, still last verified Aug 2.
- News scan: xAI's Grok Bot (persistent, always-on agent teammates with browser/terminal access) is now bundled into Cursor Pro+, Ultra, and Teams seats at no extra cost, confirmed on cursor.com/help/grok-bot/plans — a direct product of the Cursor/SpaceXAI relationship. Noted here; doesn't change the verdict or pricing ladder, which stays unverified since the Aug 2 sweep.
- Real drift on cursor.com/pricing: the plan ladder holds ($0/$20/$60/$200, Teams $40/seat) but the unit changed — plans now sell agent-request limits against a first-party model pool instead of a dollar credit balance, and Cursor doubled those limits across all individual and Teams plans on July 21, 2026. Added Grok 4.5 (released July 8, 2026; trained jointly with SpaceXAI on Cursor data) to the versions list; Composer 2.5 remains as a separate, smaller weight class. Renamed Business to Teams Standard to match the pricing page. SpaceX acquisition still pending, expected Q3 close.
- Verified: individual plans unchanged. The June Teams update took effect July 1 for renewing customers — Business seats now split usage into two pools (first-party Composer/Auto vs third-party API models), giving more headroom at the same $40 price. Added Composer 2.5, Cursor's first-party model, to the versions list. Ownership note: SpaceX agreed June 16 to acquire Anysphere (Cursor) for $60B all-stock, expected to close ~Q3 2026 pending regulatory approval; reporting says Cursor usage data would feed Grok's training — added as a trust-boundary consideration.
- Verified plans: Hobby free, Pro $20, Pro+ $60, Ultra $200, Business $40/seat with $120 Premium seats (June 2026 update).
Give Cursor a job
The hands-on coding seat: an editor where AI agents write, refactor, and navigate the codebase with you.
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