Graphite Review 2026: Pricing, Features, Pros & Cons
Graphite made its name on stacked pull requests at Shopify, Snowflake and Figma. Then Cursor bought it. This review covers what it actually costs across four tiers, whether stacking is worth the workflow change, and the one question the acquisition forces you to answer before you buy.
Quick Verdict
Best for: GitHub-based teams whose bottleneck is review and merge latency, who want stacked PRs, a merge queue and unlimited AI review on one flat per-seat bill — and who are comfortable with their review platform now being owned by Cursor. Not the pick if you need self-hosting or deliberate vendor independence.
What Is Graphite?
Graphite is a code review and merge platform built on top of GitHub. Its founding idea is the stacked pull request: instead of finishing one change, waiting for approval, then starting the next, you build dependent changes on top of each other and open a small PR for each. A CLI handles the restacking mechanics, a VS Code extension and an inbox handle the review surface, and a merge queue lands the stack in order once CI is green.
The second half of the product is AI. Graphite generates PR titles and descriptions, runs AI reviews with suggested fixes and CI summaries, and offers Graphite Chat over the change. Both AI reviews and Chat are metered as “limited” on the free and Starter tiers and become unlimited on Team, alongside review customization — automations, filters and rules — that let you shape what the reviewer comments on.
The context that matters in 2026: Cursor announced it was acquiring Graphite on 19 December 2025. Graphite keeps its own brand and product, but Cursor Cloud Agents now appear inside Graphite pull requests, Enterprise sales routes through cursor.com, and the two roadmaps are converging through the year. That is a strong story if you already live in Cursor and a genuine objection if you wanted your reviewer to be a different company from your code generator.
Built a code review or merge tool? People land on this review while they are still shopping.
Add it to the coding category — a free listing publishes after review, and it is the same page ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google read when someone asks for a recommendation. Want it live in minutes with a Verified badge instead? That option is on the form, one-time, no subscription.
Want an AI reviewer that is not owned by a coding-agent vendor? Start here.
Graphite Pros & Cons
✓ Pros
- •Stacked pull requests are the real product: you can work on several dependent changes at once instead of waiting for each to be approved, which is the single biggest unlock for a team blocked on review latency
- •A merge queue is included on the Team tier rather than sold as a separate enterprise add-on, which is unusual in this category
- •The free Hobby tier is generous for a solo developer — CLI for stacked PRs and simplified git commands, VS Code extension, MCP server, inbox and notifications, plus limited AI reviews and Graphite Chat
- •Team tier gives unlimited AI reviews and unlimited Graphite Chat, so the review budget is a flat per-seat line rather than a usage meter you have to forecast
- •AI review customization — automations, filters and rules — is included at Team, not reserved for Enterprise
- •MCP support means the platform is addressable by coding agents directly, which matters now that a large share of PRs are agent-authored
- •Real adoption at engineering orgs that are hard to sell to: Shopify, Snowflake and Figma are named public customers
- •Annual billing is a straightforward 20% discount rather than a bespoke quote, so a small team can self-serve the cheaper price
✗ Cons
- •Cursor acquired Graphite in December 2025, so your review platform is now owned by a coding-agent vendor — a governance problem if you specifically wanted validation independent of whoever wrote the diff
- •AI reviews and Graphite Chat are both 'limited' on Hobby and Starter with no published number, so you cannot tell where the cap is until you hit it
- •The jump from Starter to Team doubles the price, $20 to $40 per user per month, and almost everything people actually evaluate Graphite for — unlimited AI review, automations, merge queue — sits on the far side of it
- •No self-hosting option at any tier, which rules it out for teams that cannot send source to a vendor; Greptile and CodeRabbit both offer one
- •SAML/SSO, audit logs, ACLs and GitHub Enterprise Server support are all Enterprise-only, and Enterprise sales now routes through cursor.com
- •It is GitHub-centric — the tiering is written around personal-account repos versus GitHub Organization repos, so GitLab or Bitbucket shops are not the audience
- •Stacked PRs are a workflow change, not a plugin: the benefit only materialises if the whole team adopts the CLI and the review habits that go with it
- •Branding and domains have been in motion post-acquisition (graphite.dev, graphite.com, Cursor-hosted sales pages), which makes documentation and third-party guides inconsistent to follow
Graphite Pricing 2026
Hobby
- •Personal account repos
- •CLI for stacked PRs
- •VS Code extension and MCP
- •Inbox and in-app notifications
- •Limited AI reviews and Chat
Solo developers and personal projects
Starter
- •Billed annually
- •All GitHub Organization repos
- •Slack notifications
- •Team insights
- •AI reviews still limited
Small teams that mainly want stacking across org repos
Team
- •Billed annually
- •Unlimited AI reviews
- •Unlimited Graphite Chat
- •AI review customization and automations
- •Merge queue and CI optimizer
Teams buying Graphite for AI review, not just stacking
Pricing transcribed from Graphite's pricing page in August 2026, with the annual toggle applied — the page advertises 20% off for annual billing, so monthly rates are higher. A fourth tier, Enterprise, is custom-priced and adds advanced merge queue settings, custom analytics, ACLs, SAML, an audit log for SIEM, GitHub Enterprise Server support, premium support and SLAs, a custom MSA and private uploads.
The Starter-to-Team jump is the whole decision
Starter at $20 per user per month buys you stacking across your organisation's repos, Slack notifications and team insights. That is a real product, but AI reviews and Graphite Chat stay “limited” — and the pricing page never says what the limit is. Team at $40 is where unlimited AI reviews, unlimited Chat, review customization, automations, the merge queue and the CI optimizer all arrive at once.
So the honest way to evaluate Graphite is to decide which product you are buying. If you want stacked pull requests and better review ergonomics, Starter is the line item, and it is competitively priced. If you want AI review — the thing most teams are shopping for in 2026 — you are comparing $40 per user per month against Greptile at $30 per seat plus credits and CodeRabbit's flat per-developer subscription, and Graphite's advantage is that the merge queue and stacking come in the same bill. Trial the Team tier before committing; the free Hobby tier will not tell you what unlimited review feels like on your codebase.
Graphite vs Greptile vs CodeRabbit
| Feature | Graphite | Greptile | CodeRabbit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry paid price | $20/user/mo (annual) | $30/seat/mo | Per-developer subscription |
| Unlimited AI reviews | ✅ Team tier and up | ❌ 50 credits, then $1 each | ✅ Flat per developer |
| Stacked pull requests | ✅ Core product | ❌ Not offered | ❌ Not offered |
| Merge queue | ✅ Team (basic), Enterprise (advanced) | ❌ Not offered | ❌ Not offered |
| Self-hosting | ❌ Not offered | ✅ Enterprise | ✅ Self-hosted option |
| Independent of a coding-agent vendor | ❌ Owned by Cursor | ✅ Independent | ✅ Independent |
| MCP server | ✅ All tiers incl. Hobby | ⚠️ Integrations, not MCP-first | ⚠️ Varies |
| SAML/SSO and audit log | ⚠️ Enterprise only | ⚠️ Enterprise only | ✅ Higher tiers |
Graphite Key Features in Depth
Stacked pull requests and the merge queue
This is the part of Graphite nothing else in the category replicates. Stacking removes the serial dependency between writing change two and getting change one approved, which is why it caught on at large orgs where review latency, not typing speed, was the constraint. The merge queue is the natural companion: once a stack is approved it lands in order with CI verified at each step, instead of a human babysitting rebases. Basic merge queue is on Team; advanced settings are Enterprise. Be honest about the adoption cost — stacking only pays off if the whole team uses the CLI.
AI reviews, Chat and customization
Graphite writes PR titles and descriptions, reviews the change with suggested fixes and CI summaries, and answers questions about it through Graphite Chat. The decisive detail is metering: both are limited on Hobby and Starter and unlimited on Team. Review customization — automations, filters and rules — also lands at Team, and it is the feature that determines whether the reviewer becomes useful or becomes noise. Code indexing controls and AI privacy controls appear at the higher tiers, which is where a security review will want to look.
What the Cursor acquisition actually changes
Cursor announced the deal on 19 December 2025, a month after reporting $1B in annualised revenue at a $29.3B valuation. Graphite keeps its brand and ships as its own product, but the integration has already started — Cursor Cloud Agents can be created, reviewed and shipped inside a Graphite pull request, and Enterprise contact routes through cursor.com. Cursor also already had its own reviewer, Bugbot, so it now owns two. For a Cursor shop this is straightforwardly good. For anyone whose reason to buy an AI reviewer is independent verification of agent-written code, it is the strongest argument for shortlisting an independent alternative.
Where it will not fit
Two hard stops. There is no self-hosted option at any tier, so a team that cannot send source code to a vendor is out — Greptile and CodeRabbit both offer one. And the product is GitHub-shaped: the tier comparison is written in terms of personal-account versus GitHub Organization repos, with GitHub Enterprise Server support as an Enterprise line item, so GitLab and Bitbucket shops should look elsewhere. Everything a compliance reviewer asks for — SAML, ACLs, audit log to SIEM, custom analytics — is Enterprise and quote-only.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Graphite cost in 2026?
Graphite publishes four tiers. Hobby is free and covers personal-account repos, the stacked-PR CLI, the VS Code extension, MCP, notifications, and limited AI reviews and Chat. Starter is $20 per user per month billed annually and adds all GitHub Organization repos, Slack notifications and team insights. Team is $40 per user per month billed annually and adds unlimited AI reviews, unlimited Graphite Chat, AI review customization, automations, the merge queue and the CI optimizer. Enterprise is custom-priced and adds advanced merge queue settings, custom analytics, ACLs, SAML, an audit log for SIEM, GitHub Enterprise Server support, premium support and SLAs. The pricing page advertises 20% off for annual billing, so monthly rates are correspondingly higher than the figures above.
Did Cursor buy Graphite?
Yes. Cursor — the AI code editor built by Anysphere — announced a definitive agreement to acquire Graphite on 19 December 2025, reported by Fortune and TechCrunch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell framed it around review becoming the bottleneck as writing code got faster, and Graphite CEO Merrill Lutsky described the two products as an end-to-end platform for writing, reviewing and merging. Graphite continues to operate as an independent product and brand, with deeper Cursor integration planned through 2026 — Cursor Cloud Agents already appear inside Graphite pull requests. It was Cursor's third acquisition after Supermaven in November 2024 and the Koala team in July 2025.
Should the Cursor acquisition change my decision?
It depends on why you are buying. If you want a review and merge platform and you already use Cursor, the acquisition is a positive: tighter integration between the agent writing the code and the surface reviewing it is exactly the roadmap. If your reason for buying an AI reviewer is independent validation of agent-written code, it is a real objection — your reviewer and your author now share a vendor and an incentive. Teams in the second camp usually shortlist Greptile, which markets itself explicitly as a neutral validation layer for every coding agent.
What are stacked pull requests and are they worth the workflow change?
Stacking lets you build several dependent changes on top of each other and open a pull request for each, instead of waiting for change one to be reviewed and merged before starting change two. On a team where review latency is measured in hours or days, that is the difference between a developer working continuously and a developer blocked. The cost is that it is a genuine workflow change: the whole team has to adopt the Graphite CLI and get comfortable with restacking after a review comment lands mid-stack. If your PRs are already small, independent and reviewed within the hour, stacking buys you much less and the AI review features are the real reason to look.
Graphite vs Greptile — which should I pick?
Different shapes of product. Graphite is a platform: stacked PRs, a merge queue, a CI optimizer, insights, plus AI review included at Team for $40 per user per month with no usage meter. Greptile is a focused AI reviewer that plugs into your existing workflow at $30 per seat with 50 review credits and $1 per review after that. Pick Graphite if you want to change how your team reviews and merges, and you value a flat, predictable AI review bill. Pick Greptile if your workflow is fine and you only want the best independent reviewer bolted onto it — or if you need self-hosting, which Graphite does not offer at any tier.
Is Graphite free?
The Hobby tier is free indefinitely and is more capable than most free tiers in this category: the stacked-PR CLI, simplified git commands, the VS Code extension, MCP, inbox and in-app notifications, and limited access to both AI reviews and Graphite Chat. The hard boundary is repository scope — Hobby covers personal account repos only, so the moment your work lives in a GitHub Organization you are on Starter at minimum. There is also a free trial of the Team tier for teams that want to test unlimited AI review before committing.
Does Graphite support GitLab or Bitbucket?
Graphite is built around GitHub — the plan comparison is written in terms of personal-account repos versus GitHub Organization repos, and GitHub Enterprise Server support is an Enterprise-tier line item. If your code lives in GitLab or Bitbucket, Graphite is not the product to evaluate; look at reviewers that are explicitly platform-agnostic instead.
Final Verdict
Graphite is the most complete review-and-merge platform for GitHub teams, and stacked pull requests remain a capability nothing else in the AI code review category offers. At $40 per user per month the Team tier bundles unlimited AI reviews, unlimited Chat, review customization, automations, a merge queue and a CI optimizer into one predictable line — no credits to forecast. Shopify, Snowflake and Figma using it is meaningful evidence that it survives contact with a large engineering org.
The caveats are structural rather than technical. Almost everything worth buying sits behind the Starter-to-Team doubling, the AI limits on the cheaper tiers are unpublished, there is no self-hosting at any price, and the platform is now owned by Cursor. That last point is not a defect — for a Cursor shop it is the reason to buy — but it turns the choice into a strategic one. If you want your reviewer to be independent of the vendor whose agent authored the diff, read our Greptile review before you commit. If you want the review bottleneck itself fixed, Graphite is still the tool that does it.
Compare Graphite vs Every Other AI Code Reviewer
See how Graphite stacks up against Greptile, CodeRabbit, Qodo and the rest of the category.
Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up through them, AISO Tools may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This never affects our rankings or reviews.
📬 Get the best new AI tools delivered weekly
One concise email with fresh launches, trending picks, and featured standouts.
Join thousands of professionals who discover the best AI tools every week. No spam — unsubscribe anytime.