Is Cursor free to use?

Yes — Cursor has a free Hobby plan with limited agent requests. Paid plans start at $20/month for Pro, with higher tiers for heavier usage; see Cursor’s pricing page for current rates (as of August 2026).

Does Cursor work with VS Code extensions?

Yes. Because Cursor is a fork of Visual Studio Code, most VS Code extensions, themes, and keybindings carry over, and existing VS Code settings import automatically when you switch.

Which AI models does Cursor use?

Cursor connects to third-party models from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, alongside proprietary models — including Composer — that Anysphere trains itself, and lets users choose or auto-select between them.

How is Cursor different from GitHub Copilot?

Copilot is an extension added to an existing editor of your choice. Cursor is a standalone editor — a full fork of VS Code — rebuilt so AI is wired into every part of it, from autocomplete to codebase search to code review, not just a chat sidebar.

What Is Cursor — and How Is It Different From GitHub Copilot?

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor: a development environment, built on top of Microsoft’s open-source Visual Studio Code, that lets programmers describe a change in plain language and get working code back rather than typing every line by hand. Made by Anysphere, a San Francisco startup founded in 2022, Cursor launched in 2023 and has since become one of the most widely used AI tools built specifically for software development.

What Cursor Actually Is

Open Cursor and it looks like an ordinary code editor: a file tree, an open file, a terminal at the bottom. The difference is that nearly every part of it is wired into large language models — from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, plus models Anysphere trains itself — and into an index of the entire codebase, not just the file that happens to be open. That indexing matters: it lets Cursor pull in a config file three folders away, a shared utility function, or a related test, and use that context so generated code actually fits the project’s existing patterns instead of reinventing them.

How It Works

Three features carry most of the workload. Tab predicts the next edit as a developer types, often jumping ahead to fix related lines elsewhere in the same file rather than just finishing the current one. Agent mode, built around Cursor’s Composer interface, takes a natural-language instruction — “add rate limiting to this endpoint” — plans the necessary steps, edits multiple files, runs the project’s tests or terminal commands, and reports back. Bugbot reviews pull requests automatically on GitHub, flagging likely bugs before a human reviewer looks at the diff.

Cursor’s AI agents can also run in the background or in the cloud, working through a task on their own and presenting a finished diff for review later — a shift the company describes as moving developers from writing every line to directing and reviewing what an agent produces.

Cursor vs. GitHub Copilot

The most common comparison is with GitHub Copilot, Microsoft’s AI coding assistant, and the difference is architectural as much as it is about features. Copilot is an extension that plugs into whatever editor a team already uses — VS Code, a JetBrains IDE, Neovim, and others. Cursor is a full fork of VS Code, rebuilt so AI touches the entire editor rather than sitting in a sidebar: the autocomplete engine, the codebase search, the terminal, the review workflow. That depth of integration is Cursor’s main pitch; the tradeoff is that adopting it means switching editors, while Copilot layers onto an existing one.

How to Start Using It

Cursor offers a free Hobby plan with limited agent requests, enough to try the editor before paying for it. Paid plans start with Pro at $20 a month, with Pro+ and Ultra above it for heavier usage, plus a $40-per-user Teams plan and custom Enterprise pricing — as of August 2026, per Cursor’s own pricing page, which lists current rates and what each tier includes. To try it, download the desktop app for macOS, Windows, or Linux; existing VS Code settings, extensions, and keybindings import automatically, so there’s little setup for anyone already using VS Code.

Why It Matters

Cursor’s rise reflects a broader shift in how software gets written: developers increasingly describe a change and review what an agent produces, rather than typing every line themselves. That shift has real commercial weight behind it — Anysphere’s revenue and valuation grew fast enough, and attracted enough interest from outside the software industry, that the company’s tools are now treated as strategic infrastructure rather than a niche developer product.

In the News

That strategic value was on full display when SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Anysphere, folding Cursor into its own AI division — a sign of how central AI-assisted software development has become, even to companies far outside the traditional tech industry.