Cursor: Is It Free, What Each Plan Costs and My Real Test

Cursor is an AI coding agent made by Anysphere: you describe a change, and it reads your project, edits the files and runs commands, in its desktop editor for Mac, Windows and Linux, in any terminal, or in the cloud from your browser. Is Cursor free? Yes. The Free plan costs $0 and gives you a limited number of agent and Chat requests, and I ran two real coding jobs on it without paying. Paid plans start at $8 a month, but the one most people will want, Premium, is $30, because it's the first that lets you use Claude, GPT or Gemini.

What Cursor is in 2026

If you remember Cursor as VS Code with an AI sidekick, it has moved on. The front page now calls it "your coding agent for building ambitious software," and the download page splits it into three ways in: Desktop, "an agent-first experience, with all the best parts of the editor for when you need them"; Terminal, to "run agents in any terminal or script"; and Web, to kick off agents in the cloud from your browser, your phone, or tools like Slack, GitHub and Linear.

There's also an iPhone app, for paid plans. Cursor launched it as a public beta in June 2026, and the idea is that you start an agent in the cloud, or keep steering one that's running on your computer, from your phone, then review the result from your phone or back at your desk.

The other big change isn't in the product but in the checkout. Cursor is now sold as part of The X Subscription, "one subscription for Grok, Cursor, and X," and its FAQ says subscriptions "are only sold directly through X Subscription Corp." So whatever plan you pick also comes with Grok and X perks, whether you wanted them or not.

Is Cursor free?

Yes, and it's a real free plan, not a trial. The pricing page lists Free at $0 a month with "Limited AI usage": limited agent requests and limited Chat requests. Cursor doesn't publish a number for those limits, so you find out where the ceiling is by using it.

The account I tested with was opened before the plan change, and Cursor's command-line agent reported its subscription tier as Free, with the model set to Auto. I left it that way for both jobs, and nothing asked me for a card along the way.

Cursor pricing

These are the prices on Cursor's pricing page and in its docs, in US dollars. Tax is added on top, and you can cancel anytime, but do it at least 24 hours before renewal to avoid another charge.

Above Teams sits Enterprise, at a custom price, with pooled usage, invoicing, SCIM and audit logs. One detail that's easy to miss: the yearly prices aren't on the pricing page itself. They're in Cursor's docs, and they work out to two months free on every individual plan.

If you're still on one of the old plans (Hobby, Pro, Pro+, the old Ultra and a few others), Cursor says they "continue for existing customers," with two monthly usage pools instead of the new weekly one. Nobody's forcing you to switch.

How the usage pool works (and what Grok has to do with it)

Sorry, this part gets a bit technical, but it's what decides whether $30 is enough. Every paid plan includes one pool of usage for Cursor's own models, and that pool is shared across everything on your subscription: the agent in the editor, the command line, cloud agents, Grok Bot and the Grok apps. It refreshes weekly, so, in Cursor's words, "one heavy day never wipes out your whole month." It also means an afternoon making images in Grok comes out of the same allowance as your code.

Different models drain the pool at different speeds, and third-party models don't touch it at all: on Premium and up, Claude, GPT and Gemini are paid from prepaid credit at their API list price, from the very first request. When the pool runs out, you can wait for the weekly reset, keep going with that same prepaid credit, or move up a plan. Cursor says requests are "never downgraded in quality or speed," and each top-up currently stays valid for 365 days. You can see what's left in the editor's settings and on your Grok dashboard.

How I tested it: a US business-day calculator

I wanted something useful with an answer I could check, so I asked Cursor's command-line agent, on the free plan and in an empty project, for a Python script that counts the business days in a month in the United States: weekdays minus the 11 federal holidays, with Saturday holidays observed on the Friday before and Sunday ones on the Monday after, no external libraries, a table in the terminal, and "test it yourself before you finish."

It took under a minute. Cursor wrote one file, ran it, and answered that July 2026 has 22 business days, because July 4 falls on a Saturday and Independence Day is observed on Friday, July 3.

Then I checked it against my own calculation, with the holidays typed in by hand from the federal government's official holiday tables. Eight months, eight matches, including the two nasty ones at the end of 2027: Christmas observed on Friday, December 24, and New Year's Day 2028, which lands on a Saturday and is therefore observed on Friday, December 31, 2027. I didn't mention that last case, and Cursor handled it anyway. Nice.

It did slip once. Juneteenth has only been a federal holiday since 2021, but the script counted it in every year, so June 2020 came out one business day short. To be fair, my request never mentioned older years. I told it, and in the same message asked for a new option: the date that falls N business days after a given date, for things like payment due dates, with real tests around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

About a minute later, both changes were in, and the edit was small and tidy. I ran six dates through my own check, from July 2026 to the last days of 2027, and all six matched. One thing worth knowing if you reuse the idea: it counts federal holidays only, so the Friday after Thanksgiving is a business day, which is right for the federal calendar but maybe not for your office.

My takeaway: on a small, well-defined job, the free plan is enough to see what Cursor's agent is like, and it's good. It reads the brief, tests its own work and fixes things fast. It still did exactly what I asked and nothing more on Juneteenth, so check its output the way you'd check a new colleague's.

Who Cursor is for, and who should skip it

Cursor makes sense if you write code, or at least read it, and want an agent that works on your actual project, on your machine or in the cloud. The desktop app is where most people will live, and the terminal agent is great for quick jobs and scripts.

Skip it, or stay on Free, if you mainly want Claude: on Premium you'd pay $30 a month plus Claude's API prices, while Claude's own Pro plan at $20 already includes Claude Code. And if you don't code at all, an app builder will get you further with less friction.

Cursor or something else?

If Claude is the model you'd pick anyway, go straight to Claude: there's a free plan, and Pro at $20 a month includes Claude Code. GitHub Copilot is the obvious rival inside your existing editor, with a free plan, Pro at $10 a month, and agent mode in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse and Xcode. If you'd rather not touch code, Replit builds the whole app with hosting included (Starter is free, Core $20 a month), Lovable gives you 5 free build credits a day and Pro at $25 a month, and v0 gives new accounts a one-time $5 credit, with Plus at $30 per user a month.