Anysphere

IDE

Cursor

AI coding editor from Anysphere with an in-editor agent, a terminal CLI, and cloud agents that run in isolated VMs.

https://cursor.com↗

Shape
IDE

Compare only what the shape makes comparable.

Released
2023-03 src↗as of 2026-08-20
Licence
Proprietary src↗
Self-hosting
unknown

No first-party page found stating a self-hosted or on-premises deployment option. Cloud agents are explicitly described as running in Cursor-operated isolated VMs in the cloud. Recorded as null rather than false because no vendor page affirmatively denies self-hosting.

Models
multi-vendor src↗

Named: Grok 4.6, Grok 4.6 (Fast), Grok 4.5, Grok 4.5 (Fast), Composer 2.5, Composer 2.5 (Fast), Claude 4 Sonnet, Claude 4 Sonnet 1M, Claude 4.5 Haiku, Claude 4.5 Opus, Claude 4.5 Sonnet, Claude 4.6 Opus, Claude 4.6 Sonnet, Claude 4.7 Opus, Claude Fable 5, Claude Opus 4.7 (fast mode), Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Opus 5, Claude Sonnet 5, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 3 Flash, Gemini 3 Pro, Gemini 3 Pro Image Preview, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.7 Flash, GPT-5, GPT-5 Fast, GPT-5 Mini, GPT-5-Codex, GPT-5.1 Codex, GPT-5.1 Codex Max, GPT-5.1 Codex Mini, GPT-5.2, GPT-5.2 Codex, GPT-5.3 Codex, GPT-5.4, GPT-5.4 Mini, GPT-5.4 Nano, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.6 Luna, GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-5.6 Terra, GLM 5.2, Kimi K2.7 Code, Kimi K3

Pricing
  • Hobby$0 per user / month
  • Pro$20 per user / month
  • Pro+$60 per user / month
  • Ultra$200 per user / month
  • Startcontact
  • Teams (Standard)$40 per user / month
  • Teams (Premium)$120 per user / month
  • Enterprisecontact
pricing page↗as of 2026-08-20
Interfaces
standalone-ide, terminal, web, mobile, chat-platform, api src↗
Capabilities
  • MCP support
    yes src↗mcp.json; stdio, sse, http
  • Plugins / custom tools
    yes src↗plugins bundling skills, hooks, rules
  • Subagents / parallel agents
    yes src↗nestable async subagents, parallel cloud agents
  • Hooks / lifecycle events
    yes src↗.cursor/hooks.json, shell or prompt handlers
  • Persistent memory
    yes src↗MEMORIES.md outside the workspace, plus rules
  • Background execution
    yes src↗cloud VMs, scheduled and event automations
  • Sandboxing / permissions
    yes src↗approval run modes, network allowlists
  • Git / PR integration
    yes src↗cloud agents open merge-ready PRs
as of 2026-08-20
Stated limits
  • The Start plan is India-only and covers the Cursor Models pool with no access to the Other Models pool. src↗

  • Enterprise-managed hooks and admin-enforced sandbox network allowlists/denylists are Enterprise-plan features. src↗

What we could not source
  • first_release

    Cursor does not publish a launch announcement with a first-release date. The earliest dated changelog entries fetched are v0.1.9 (2023-03-27), whose page navigation references v0.1.7 (2023-03-25). 2023-03 is the earliest month evidenced on a first-party page, not a confirmed first public release.

  • open_source

    No first-party Cursor page states licensing terms for the editor or CLI, and no vendor source repository exists. Recorded false on the absence of any published source or license; source_url points at the docs home rather than a licensing statement.

  • self_hostable

    No vendor page affirms or denies a self-hosted deployment; recorded null rather than guessing false.

  • pricing (Teams Premium)

    cursor.com/docs/account/pricing states Teams Premium at $120/user/mo. cursor.com/pricing does not display a dollar figure for Teams Premium, describing it only as "Everything on Individual, plus:" with 5x limits. The docs figure was used.

  • model_support

    The models page groups models by provider: Cursor (Grok 4.5/4.6 and Composer 2.5 are listed under Cursor Models), Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Z.ai (GLM 5.2), and Moonshot (Kimi). models_named lists the names only, without that grouping.

Sentiment

What people say about Cursor

-13

46 opinions · 2026-01-19 to 2026-08-19 · medium confidence

How this number was made

Counts are conservative estimates of distinct opinion-holders across the threads read, each tagged by overall polarity toward Cursor; not a logged per-comment tally. Score is round(100*(13-19)/46) = -13.

Skew

Heavily Hacker News weighted (30 of 46), and two HN threads supply most of it: the Cursor 3 launch thread (2026-04-02) and the usage-page/cost thread (2026-08-01). HN skews senior, terminal-friendly and CLI-partisan, which structurally undercounts the mouse-driven IDE user Cursor is built for; several commenters said as much about themselves. Cursor runs its own forum rather than public GitHub issues, so there is no github sample at all and no bug-report channel to balance the opinion threads. r/cursor is a vendor-adjacent sub where complaints concentrate and casual satisfaction is silent. Read this as the opinion of power users evaluating Cursor against CLI agents, not as a general user base.

  • hackernews-23
  • reddit-11
Trend

Sentiment visibly declined across 2026 in this sample. The April 2026 Cursor 3 launch thread is genuinely mixed; real enthusiasm for cloud computer-use and Tab, with two Cursor engineers answering criticism in-thread and at least one commenter withdrawing his objection after the reply. By the August 2026 thread the framing had shifted from 'is the redesign good' to 'what is Cursor even for now', with the top comment a 2023-era paying customer saying he had not opened it in six months. The August removal of cost data from the usage page hardened that. Counterweight: the Tab-quality praise is stable across the whole window and comes disproportionately from people who already left, which suggests the churn is about product direction and pricing, not the core editing experience.

Themes

Praised for

  • Cursor Tab and inline autocomplete are best-in-class
  • Stays an IDE; you can read and review the diffs
  • Model choice under one subscription
  • Best value and highest usage ceiling at $20
  • Lowest learning curve of the agent tools

Complained about

  • Product identity is confused after Cursor 3
  • Commodity vs CLI agents; why still pay
  • Chat-first redesign buried the code
  • Cost and opaque token billing
  • VS Code fork breakage and missing extensions
  • Runaway loops burn tokens
In their words

Cursor is an IDE and an agentic interface and a cli tool and a platform that all work locally and and in the cloud and in the browser and supports dozens of different models. I don't know how to use the thing anymore, or what the thing actually is.

MeetingsBrowser · hackernews · 2026-04-02 · read it↗

For $20 a month, I can plan and implement thousands of features using Composer 2 or Auto with Cursor. The usage limits are insanely higher.

lubujackson · hackernews · 2026-04-02 · read it↗

It's why I use Cursor over Claude Code, I still want to _code_ not just vibe my way through tickets.

seamossfet · hackernews · 2026-04-02 · read it↗

Plus at every update it seems Cursor seems to break more of their UI in the 'not a cloud agent chat UI' vs the more traditional VSCode sort of layout of code first. I should probably cancel.

daviding · hackernews · 2026-04-02 · read it↗

It's been the perfect in-between of coding by hand (never again!) and strictly "vibe coding" for me. Being able to keep my eyes on all the changes in a "traditional" IDE view helps me maintain a mental model of how my systems work.

with a cursor sub for example, the $200 plan gets you $400/m in API credits with the frontier labs with ZERO rate limiting. None of that hourly nonsense.

You just made me feel like a boomer for liking the chat view in cursor rather than agent window. I find I can review the changes better in the editor

@sushipolice2196 · youtube · 2026-05-26 · read it↗

I asked Cursor to add a few GUI elements, it deleted the entire file and then burnt tokens in a loop trying to keep re-creating the GUI file only to delete it again and again and again. I stopped it eventually.

monsterinadrawer · reddit · 2026-06-12 · read it↗

As a VS Code fork it has the lowest learning curve, the fastest autocomplete, and the most intuitive interface for reviewing AI-generated diffs

I was an early and passionate adopter and paying customer of Cursor (since 2023!), but it’s probably been 6 months since I opened it.

I've tried all the options available a couple months ago, and none of them feel nearly as polished as Cursor. For one thing, Cursor Tab is just far better than any other "next edit" prediction I've used.

RussianCow · hackernews · 2026-08-01 · read it↗

I was a Windsurf then Cursor user and even provided product feedback to the Cursor team on various aspects of their product but the costs for using it killed the value.

joinjune · hackernews · 2026-08-01 · read it↗

Even the command line "cursor ~/git" no longer opens an IDE in the ~/git folder but some random Chatgpt-esque interface that nobody asked for. Honestly, VS Code is a better "old Cursor" now than Cursor is.

AussieWog93 · hackernews · 2026-08-02 · read it↗

Cursor as an editor/IDE when you take away LLM features is just a worse VSCode