Cursor Pricing 2026: Every Plan, Compared
Cursor is free to start, $20/month for Pro, and $40/user/month for Teams, with a $200/month Ultra tier for developers who run agents all day. The number most people get wrong is the usage layer sitting on top of the subscription.
How much does Cursor cost?
Cursor Pro costs $20/month ($192/year if billed annually) and includes a fixed monthly allowance of model usage. Above that allowance you either switch to slower queued requests or pay usage-based rates at cost. Teams is $40/user/month and adds SSO, org-wide privacy mode and centralised billing. Ultra is $200/month and buys roughly 20x the Pro usage allowance — it only makes sense if you are running long agentic sessions on frontier models every day.
Cursor plans and prices (2026)
Free forever
Per user, monthly or annual
Per user, monthly
Per seat, minimum 2 seats
Hobby (Free) — $0
- ✓Full Cursor editor (VS Code fork)
- ✓Unlimited fast tab completions
- ✓Limited monthly agent requests
- ✓Pro trial period on signup
- ✓No credit card required
Pro — $20/mo
- ✓Included monthly model-usage allowance
- ✓Unlimited tab completions
- ✓Access to frontier models (Claude, GPT, Gemini)
- ✓Agent / Composer multi-file editing
- ✓Background agents
- ✓Usage-based pricing available past the allowance
Ultra — $200/mo
- ✓~20x the Pro usage allowance
- ✓Priority access to new frontier models
- ✓Everything in Pro
- ✓Best fit for all-day autonomous agent runs
Teams — $40/user/mo
- ✓Everything in Pro, per seat
- ✓Org-wide privacy mode enforcement
- ✓SAML/OIDC SSO
- ✓Centralised billing and usage analytics
- ✓Admin seat management
Is there a free Cursor plan?
Yes — the Hobby plan is free forever and is a genuine tier, not a 14-day trial. You get the full Cursor editor, unlimited tab completions on the smaller in-house model, and a limited number of agent requests per month. It is enough to evaluate whether you prefer Cursor's Composer flow to plain VS Code, but the agent-request cap is low enough that a single afternoon of serious refactoring will exhaust it. New accounts also get a Pro trial period on signup.
How Cursor's usage pricing actually works
Cursor moved away from a simple '500 fast requests' counter to a model where your subscription includes a dollar-denominated allowance of model usage, and different models consume that allowance at very different rates. This is the single biggest source of surprise bills, because a Pro plan can feel unlimited for weeks and then run dry in two days of agent work.
Is annual Cursor billing worth it?
Annual Pro is $192 versus $240 paid monthly — a $48 saving, or 20%. That is a real discount, but the AI code editor market is moving fast enough that a 12-month commitment is a genuine bet. If you have already used Cursor daily for three months and have not seriously trialled Windsurf or Zed, take the annual. If you are in month one, stay monthly: the switching cost between these editors is close to zero and prices are still resetting across the category.
Costs the Cursor pricing page doesn't lead with
Usage overages on agent runs
The $20 is a floor, not a ceiling. Developers who lean on background agents routinely report usage-based charges on top of the subscription. Set a spend cap in Settings → Usage before you start.
Teams has a seat minimum
Teams billing starts at two seats, so the real entry price is $80/month, not $40. Solo founders are better off on Pro until there is a second engineer.
Privacy mode is free but costs speed
Privacy mode (no code retention) is available on every tier including free, but it disables some caching and indexing paths, so the same work takes more requests.
Your own API keys don't unlock everything
You can supply your own Anthropic or OpenAI key, but BYOK does not cover Cursor's indexing, tab model or agent orchestration — you still need a paid plan for the parts that make Cursor Cursor.
Which Cursor plan should you buy?
Cheaper alternatives to Cursor
If the Cursor tier ladder is more than your workload justifies, these cost less for the same core job.
Windsurf
Free · Pro from $15/moThe closest like-for-like competitor and usually a few dollars cheaper at the individual tier. Windsurf's credit system is more legible than Cursor's allowance — you can see exactly what a Cascade run costs before you fire it.
Cline
Free (bring your own key)Open-source VS Code extension with no subscription at all. You pay raw API rates directly to Anthropic, OpenAI or DeepSeek. For developers already holding API credit, this is the cheapest path to agentic coding — you give up Cursor's indexing and tab model.
GitHub Copilot
Free tier · $10/mo ProHalf the price of Cursor Pro with a usable free tier, and it runs inside stock VS Code rather than a fork. Weaker at whole-codebase agentic edits, stronger on inline completion latency and enterprise compliance.
Zed
Free · Pro $20/moFree for the editor itself; you only pay if you use Zed's hosted AI rather than your own key. Rust-native, so it is dramatically lighter on RAM than any Electron-based option.
Cursor pricing — frequently asked questions
How much does Cursor cost per month?
Cursor Pro is $20/month, or $16/month if you pay annually ($192/year). There is a free Hobby tier, a $200/month Ultra tier with roughly 20x the usage allowance, and Teams at $40 per user per month with a two-seat minimum.
Is Cursor free?
Yes, the Hobby plan is permanently free. It includes the full editor and unlimited tab completions, but caps agent requests at a level that a single serious refactoring session will exhaust. New signups also get a short Pro trial.
Why did I get charged more than $20 for Cursor?
Because you opted into usage-based pricing and exceeded your plan's included model-usage allowance. Frontier-model agent runs draw that allowance down fast. Go to Settings → Usage and set a hard monthly spend limit; if you leave usage-based pricing off entirely, Cursor falls back to slower queued requests instead of billing you.
Is Cursor Ultra worth $200 a month?
Only if you are consistently paying $100+/month in usage overages on Pro. Ultra is priced as a bulk discount on model usage, not as a feature upgrade — the features are the same as Pro. Check three months of actual usage before upgrading.
Can I use my own API key with Cursor?
You can add your own Anthropic, OpenAI or Google key for chat and agent calls, but it does not replace a subscription. Cursor's tab-completion model, codebase indexing and agent orchestration all run on Cursor's infrastructure and require a paid plan.
How do I cancel Cursor and get a refund?
Cancel from Settings → Billing; your plan stays active until the end of the paid period and does not renew. Cursor generally honours refunds requested within a few days of an unintended renewal, but usage-based charges already incurred are not refundable.
Learn more
Ready to pick a Cursor plan?
Prices change often. Check the current tiers on Cursor directly, or compare the whole category before you commit.
People ask AI what Cursor costs. Does it name your tool as the cheaper option?
Half the people pricing Cursor end this page asking an assistant "what's a cheaper alternative?" ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity answer from pages like this one — and they only name tools they can actually read. If you build one, check whether you show up in that answer at all.
📬 Get the best new AI tools delivered weekly
One concise email with fresh launches, trending picks, and featured standouts.