Cursor, documented by
someone who had to look it up
Independent reference pages for the Cursor editor: what each plan costs, which models come out of which pool, how the agent modes differ, and the settings people search for most.
Start with what you came for
Every page below carries the figures and commands verified on 25 September 2026, with the matching page on cursor.com linked at the bottom.
- Pricing and plansHobby is free. Pro is $20 / mo., Pro+ triples the agent allowance, Ultra multiplies it by twenty. Yearly billing takes 20% off.
- Models and usage poolsTwo separate pools. Grok and Composer are included generously; Opus, GPT and Gemini bill at API rates from the second pool.
- Editor fontsChange editor.fontFamily, turn on ligatures, fix the terminal font, and the settings that actually control the UI rather than the code.
- Cursor CLIOne curl command installs it. Run agents from the terminal, in CI, or inside another editor.
- Download and installmacOS, Windows, and Linux as .deb or AppImage, plus what to do about the Android APK that does not exist.
- Status and outagesWhere the status page is, and how to tell a Cursor outage apart from a model provider incident or a local problem.
What Cursor actually is
Cursor is a fork of Visual Studio Code with a coding agent built into the core rather than bolted on as an extension. Everything you know about VS Code still applies: the same extension API, the same settings.json, the same keybindings, the same command palette. Cursor adds the parts that need to reach into the editor itself, which is why its predictions can rewrite across a file and its agent can open a terminal and watch what happens.
The company behind it is Anysphere, which announced in August 2026 that Cursor had become part of SpaceX. The visible consequence for users is the model line-up: Grok now sits in the included pool alongside Cursor's own Composer model, while Anthropic, OpenAI and Google models bill separately.
Cursor also publishes its own benchmark. CursorBench 4.0 scores agents on ambiguous, multi-file tasks pulled from real Cursor sessions, and at the top of the board Opus 5.5 Max scores 57.8% at an average of $13.43 and 185 agent steps per task. It is a useful reminder that no model is close to finishing these tasks unaided.
The four things people mean by Cursor
- Tab
- Inline prediction that proposes a multi-line diff rather than finishing the current token, and can jump the cursor to the next edit.
- Agent
- The main loop. Reads the repository, edits files, runs commands, and reports back. Plan, Debug and Design are specialised versions of it.
- Cloud agents
- The same agent running on Cursor's infrastructure instead of your laptop, which is what makes scheduled automations possible.
- Bugbot
- An agent that reviews pull requests and comments on them, billed by usage rather than included in the seat price.
What it costs
Full plan comparison| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Agent allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | Free | Free | Limited |
| Pro | $20 / mo. | $16 / mo. | Baseline for the paid tiers |
| Pro+ | $60 / mo. | $48 / mo. | 3x Pro |
| Ultra | $200 / mo. | $160 / mo. | 20x Pro |
| Teams Standard | $40 / user / mo. | $32 / user / mo. | Per seat, with shared admin |
| Teams Premium | $120 / user / mo. | $96 / user / mo. | 5x Standard |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Pooled across the organisation |
Prices exclude tax and are quoted in US dollars. cursor.com/pricing
Cursor questions people actually search
- What is Cursor?
- Cursor is a code editor built as a fork of VS Code with an AI agent at its centre. It keeps the VS Code extension model, keybindings and settings, and adds Tab prediction, an agent that can edit files and run commands, cloud agents, and a CLI. It is made by Anysphere, which became part of SpaceX in August 2026.
- Is Cursor an IDE or a code editor?
- Technically it is an editor rather than a full IDE, in the same sense VS Code is: language intelligence, debugging and build tooling come from extensions rather than being built in. In everyday use the distinction rarely matters, and most people call it an IDE.
- Is Cursor free?
- Yes, on the Hobby plan. It needs no credit card and includes a limited number of Agent requests plus access to Composer. Paid tiers start at $20 / mo. for Pro and go to $200 / mo. for Ultra, with Teams seats at $40 / user / mo..
- Which model does Cursor use by default?
- Auto picks for you. Left alone, it draws from the Cursor Models pool, which covers Grok 4.7, Grok 4.6, Grok 4.5 and Composer 2.5. Choosing a specific third-party model such as Claude Opus 5.5 or GPT-5.6 instead bills from the separate Other Models pool at that model's API price.
- Is Cursor the same as vibe coding?
- No. Vibe coding describes a way of working where you accept generated code without reading much of it. Cursor is a tool that can be used that way, but its recent direction, Plan Mode producing a reviewable plan and Debug Mode requiring you to reproduce a bug, points the other way.
- Does Cursor work with my VS Code extensions?
- Almost always. Cursor uses the same extension API and offers to import your extensions, settings and keybindings on first launch. The exception is extensions Microsoft licenses only to its own VS Code builds, which no fork can install.