Cursor: Coding Agents

Founded 2022|San Francisco, California|201-500 people|Freemium

What is Cursor?

Cursor is an AI-native code editor built as a fork of VS Code, designed from the ground up for AI-assisted development. Created by Anysphere, a company founded in 2022 by Michael Truell (CEO), Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, and Aman Sanger, Cursor has become the fastest-growing SaaS product in the AI coding space.

The editor features intelligent code completion, multi-file editing, codebase-aware chat, and an agent mode that can autonomously plan and execute coding tasks. Cursor indexes your codebase to create vector representations for accurate, project-specific suggestions rather than generic code. It supports 26 LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and DeepSeek, with quick integration of new models as they release.

Cursor reached $100 million ARR in January 2025 within 20 months of launch, growing to $500 million ARR by November 2025. The company raised $3.5 billion in total funding at a $29.3 billion valuation. With over 1 million daily active users and 50,000+ business customers, Cursor has a thriving community of 73,000+ subreddit members and 30,000+ GitHub stars.

Key features

Core capabilities this platform advertises.

AI-native code editor (VS Code fork)
Codebase-aware chat
Multi-file editing with Composer
Tab completion with context
Built-in terminal AI

Strengths and tradeoffs

What this tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.

Pros

Deep context awareness with codebase indexing for project-specific suggestions
Familiar VS Code interface with easy migration of extensions and settings
Supports 26 LLMs from multiple providers with quick model updates
Privacy mode prevents codebase from being used for model training
Comprehensive documentation and large active community

Cons

Inconsistent code edits with some models failing to apply changes
Frequent pricing changes and unclear usage limits frustrate users
Performance degrades with larger codebases during file indexing
Struggles with complex tasks in long conversations, sometimes ignoring rules

Plans & pricing

What's included in each plan, and how the tiers compare.

Hobby

2,000 completions
50 premium requests
Basic AI features

Pro

$20/month

Monthly

Unlimited completions
500 premium requests/month
Multi-model access
Background agents

Business

$40/user/month

Monthly

Everything in Pro
Admin dashboard
SAML SSO
Usage analytics
Centralized billing

View official pricing page

Common use cases

Developers who want the deepest AI integration in their code editor

Codebase-aware code generation
Multi-file feature implementation
Refactoring with full project context
Debugging with AI assistance
Rapid prototyping and iteration

Using Cursor with Respan

Respan complements Cursor by providing observability for the AI models that Cursor uses under the hood. Teams can monitor how their Cursor-powered coding workflows consume tokens across different LLM providers and optimize model selection for cost and quality.

Track LLM costs generated by Cursor coding sessions
Monitor which models Cursor uses most frequently
Compare Cursor's model routing against direct API usage
Gain visibility into AI coding costs across your team

Run Cursor in production with Respan

10KFree traces/mo

1,000+Models

5 minSetup

Respan lets you trace LLM and agent calls across any model or framework, A/B test prompts on production traffic, and route requests across 1,000+ models through one gateway.

Try Respan free

Best Cursor alternatives & competitors

Top companies in Coding Agents you can use instead of Cursor.

Claude Code

Agentic CLI that edits files, runs commands, and navigates codebases autonomously