Key Terms
- Cursor Models pool - one of two monthly usage pools on individual plans; covers Grok 4.7, Grok 4.6, Grok 4.5, and Composer 2.5 and carries "significantly more included usage" (amount undisclosed). Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Other Models pool - the second pool, drawn at each third-party model's API rate when you select it directly. Pro/Pro Plus/Ultra include it; the India-only Start plan does not. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Cursor Token Rate - a $0.25/MTok surcharge on Teams and Enterprise plans that applies to third-party model requests, now including requests Auto routes to third-party models; first-party Grok and Composer are exempt. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Cursor Router / Auto modes - Auto model routing with three optimization modes (Cost, Balance, Intelligence); on Teams/Enterprise the Router picks the model per request. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Fast mode - higher-speed variant of Cursor Models at 2x pricing (Grok 4.7 Fast is $4/$12 per MTok); unavailable on the Start plan. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Long context billing - Grok 4.7 bills at 2x standard rates above 256k input tokens (up to 500k), and Fast mode above 256k bills at 3x. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Origin - Cursor's code hosting service (GitHub competitor); Rollouts integrates with Origin or GitHub for source control. Source: Cursor – Rollouts And Security Reviewer
- Self-hosted machines - cloud-agent workers running inside your own network so codebase, build outputs, and secrets stay on your infrastructure; team pools scale on demand and hibernate when idle. Source: Cursor – Self Hosted Machines
- Grok Bot - Cursor's bot product built on the Grok harness; Enterprise gets access, network, and audit controls for it. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- CMEK - Customer Managed Encryption Keys; Enterprise feature letting customers control encryption keys (and rotation) for data Cursor stores, including cloud agent data. Source: Cursor – Privacy And Data Governance
- Max Mode - legacy request-based-plan-only feature extending a model's context window, billed at the model's API rate plus 20%. Source: Cursor – Pricing
Latest Changes
Changes since the 2026-08 report.
- New model: Grok 4.7 launched Sep 21, jointly trained by Cursor and SpaceXAI on a larger base with a longer RL run, priced the same as Grok 4.6 ($2/$6 per MTok, Fast $4/$12), with a 256k standard window and 500k long context. Source: Cursor – Grok
- Deprecation confirmed: OpenAI's Aug 28 notice will shut off its models in Cursor on November 12, 2026 with no future models provided (Astra excluded); GPT-5.6 Sol's promotional $4/$20 rate runs through November 21, 2026, nine days past the shutoff. Sources: OpenAI – Our Decision On Cursor Following Its Acquisition By Spacex , Cursor – Pricing
- Billing scope change: the $0.25/MTok Cursor Token Rate on Teams/Enterprise now also applies when Auto routes to a third-party model, not only direct selection; Grok and Composer remain exempt. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Feature added: Self-hosted machines (Sep 2) run cloud-agent tool execution inside your own network, with dynamic team pools, hibernation, sandbox integrations (AWS Lambda, Coder, Cloudflare, Daytona, Modal, Namespace, Vercel, E2B), and computer use on Linux/Mac. Source: Cursor – Self Hosted Machines
- Feature added: Cursor Projects (Sep 10, beta) add a coordinator agent that delegates to thousands of subagents, maintains shared context across months, and subscribes to Slack channels, schedules, and PRs. Source: Cursor – Projects
- Feature added: Rollouts and Security Review bots (Sep 23, Teams/Enterprise); Rollouts monitors each PR through deployment per environment and Security Review flags exploitable bugs on every PR, with trial credits for roughly 50 changes (Teams) and 500 (Enterprise) over 10 days. Source: Cursor – Rollouts And Security Reviewer
- Performance change: harness efficiency work cut user token costs by 7%, via a 66% smaller system prompt, 60% fewer static tool-description tokens, 20% fewer cold cache misses, and line numbering only every 10th line (1.6% fewer cache-read tokens). Source: Cursor – Improved Token Efficiency
- Enterprise feature: US-only data residency (inference, processing, and storage) is available per team with a 10% model-pricing uplift, limited to GPT, Claude 4.6+, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Composer, and Grok 4.5; EU+Iceland inference-only on request. Source: Cursor – Privacy And Data Governance
- Certifications: the site footer now lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, and AIUC-1 certification (AIUC-1 for agent security and reliability earned Aug 13). Sources: Cursor – Pricing , Cursor – Aiuc 1
- Pricing status: unchanged. Pro ($20/mo), Pro Plus ($60/mo), Ultra ($200/mo), Teams Standard ($40/user/mo), and Teams Premium ($120/user/mo, 5x Standard agent limits) all match the August baseline; included pool amounts remain undisclosed. Source: Cursor – Pricing
Plans
| Plan | Price (monthly) | Price (annual) | Usage limits | Key inclusions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | $0 | $0 | Limited Agent requests (undisclosed count) | Access to Composer, no credit card required |
| Start (India only) | ₹649/mo tax inclusive | undisclosed | "Generous usage" of Cursor Models pool (undisclosed); non-Fast mode only; Grok models fixed at medium effort | Grok 4.7/4.6/4.5 + Composer 2.5, cloud agents, iOS app, plugins/MCPs/hooks/skills; no Other Models pool, Bugbot, Auto, Automations, or SDK |
| Pro | $20/mo | undisclosed | Extended Agent limits, "generous limits for Grok" (undisclosed) | Both pools, frontier models, Grok Bot access, MCPs/skills/hooks, cloud agents, Bugbot on usage-based billing |
| Pro Plus | $60/mo | undisclosed | More than Pro (undisclosed) | Everything in Pro, more included usage |
| Ultra | $200/mo | undisclosed | Maximum included usage (undisclosed) | Everything in Pro Plus |
| Teams Standard | $40/user/mo | undisclosed | Undisclosed | Centralized billing, team marketplace, cloud agents + automations with shared context, Grok Bot, Bugbot, usage analytics, team-wide privacy mode, SAML/OIDC SSO |
| Teams Premium | $120/user/mo | undisclosed | 5x Standard limits on Agent (undisclosed base) | Everything in Teams Standard |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom (invoice/PO) | Pooled usage | SCIM, repository/model/MCP access controls, auto-run/browser/network controls, audit logs + service accounts, AI code tracking API, Grok Bot access/network/audit controls, data residency + CMEK, priority support |
Terms explained:
- Cursor Models / Other Models pools - two monthly-reset usage buckets; first-party Grok and Composer draw from the (larger, undisclosed) Cursor Models pool, third-party models from the Other Models pool at API rates. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Start plan - launched Jul 28, 2026 for India (3M+ users, Cursor's third-largest market); sits between Hobby and Pro. Source: Cursor – Cursor Start India
- On-demand usage - after included usage is consumed, billing continues in arrears at the same rates; requests are never downgraded in quality or speed. Source: Cursor – Pricing
Cursor's own guidance: daily Tab users and limited Agent users typically stay within included usage, daily Agent users typically cost $60 to $100/mo, and power users often $200+/mo. Source: Cursor – Pricing
Source: Cursor – Pricing , Cursor – Pricing
API Pricing
Cursor meters usage at per-MTok rates. First-party models bill from the Cursor Models pool; everything else from the Other Models pool. All figures per 1M tokens.
Cursor Models (first-party):
| Model | Input | Cache read | Output | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.7 | $2 | $0.50 | $6 | Jointly trained with SpaceXAI; >256k input billed 2x up to 500k |
| Grok 4.7 (Fast) | $4 | $1 | $12 | Fast + long context (>256k) billed 3x |
| Grok 4.7 500k | $4 | $1 | $12 | Long-context variant |
| Grok 4.7 500k (Fast) | $6 | $1.50 | $18 | |
| Grok 4.6 | $2 | $0.50 | $6 | Jointly trained with SpaceXAI |
| Grok 4.6 (Fast) | $4 | $1 | $12 | |
| Grok 4.5 | $2 | $0.50 | $6 | Jointly trained with SpaceXAI |
| Grok 4.5 (Fast) | $4 | $1 | $18 | |
| Composer 2.5 | $0.50 | $0.20 | $2.50 | Proprietary, cheapest first-party option |
| Composer 2.5 (Fast) | $3 | $0.50 | $15 | Default speed tier |
Other Models (selected; full list has 50+ entries):
| Model | Provider | Input | Cache write | Cache read | Output | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Anthropic | $4 | $5 | $0.20 | $20 | US-only endpoints +10% |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Anthropic | $2 | $2.50 | $0.20 | $10 | |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | Anthropic | $10 | $12.50 | $0.25 | $50 | Requires data-retention approval; guardrail trips auto-route to Claude Opus |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Anthropic | $1 | $1.25 | $0.10 | $5 | |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | $0.75 | - | $0.075 | $3.50 | ||
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2 | - | $0.20 | $12 | ||
| GPT-5.6 Sol | OpenAI | $4 | $5 | $0.40 | $20 | Promotional through Nov 21, 2026; model departs Cursor Nov 12, 2026 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | OpenAI | $2 | $2.50 | $0.20 | $12 | Departs Nov 12, 2026 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | OpenAI | $0.20 | $0.25 | $0.02 | $1.20 | Departs Nov 12, 2026 |
| GLM 5.3 | Z.ai | $1.40 | - | $0.26 | $4.40 | Same rates as GLM 5.2 |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | Z.ai | $0.15 | - | $0.029 | $0.50 | Cheapest model in the table |
| Kimi K3 | Moonshot | $3 | - | $0.30 | $15 | 1M context, no long-context surcharge |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | Meta | $1.25 | - | $0.15 | $4.25 | Requires Max Mode on legacy plans |
Usage-based billing mechanics:
- Teams/Enterprise third-party requests add the $0.25/MTok Cursor Token Rate (included, on-demand, and BYOK usage; Auto-routed third-party included). Source: Cursor – Pricing
- Auto modes (Cost/Balance/Intelligence) bill at the list price of the routed model. Source: Cursor – Pricing
- US-only data residency adds a 10% uplift on eligible models. Source: Cursor – Privacy And Data Governance
- Max Mode (legacy plans only) bills at the model's API rate plus 20%. Source: Cursor – Pricing
Source: Cursor – Pricing
Model Performance / Benchmarks
Grok 4.7 launch benchmarks (published by Cursor/SpaceXAI, Sep 21). Comparators run at different effort levels as labeled:
| Benchmark | Grok 4.7 (xHigh) | Grok 4.6 (High) | GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) | Fable 5.1 (Max) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CursorBench 4.0 (software engineering) | 46.3% | 40.4% | 41.7% | 51.8% |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | 71.0% (high effort) | 65.2% | 72.7% | 70.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 37.6% | 20.3% | 37.3% | 57.9% |
| EEBench (electrical engineering) | 64.0% | 53.0% | 39.4% | 56.4% |
| AA Briefcase v1.1 (multi-hour office work) | 1,657 | 1,546 | 1,487 | 1,678 |
| Harvey Legal Agent Benchmark | 19.6% | 15.8% | 2.5% | 6.7% |
| HealthBench Professional | 56.7% | 48.5% | 60.5% | 62.1% |
- GDPval: Grok 4.7 scores 1,695 Elo at extra high effort, versus 1,605 for Grok 4.6, 1,735 for Fable 5.1, and 1,542 for GPT-6 Astra.
- CursorBench cost accounting for Grok 4.7 xHigh: $6.01 average cost per task, 70,141 tokens, 88 steps.
- Note: CursorBench is Cursor's own benchmark run in Cursor's harness; GPT-6 Astra is absent from the comparison tables because OpenAI does not allow Astra in Cursor.
Source: Cursor – Grok
Latest News
Grok 4.7 Launch (September 21, 2026)
Grok 4.7 is Cursor and SpaceXAI's most capable model for long-running coding and knowledge work: larger base than Grok 4.6, longer RL run weighted toward multi-hour problems, 256k standard context with 500k long context, and training that includes the Grok Bot harness. Priced identically to Grok 4.6 ($2/$6 per MTok) and available across desktop, web, iOS, CLI, and SDK. Source: Cursor – Grok
Rollouts and Security Review (September 23, 2026)
Two new bots for Teams and Enterprise: Rollouts writes a monitoring plan on each PR, tracks the change through each deploy environment against logs, metrics, and traces (Datadog and others), and can open revert PRs when it detects regressions; Security Review posts one comment per PR flagging exploitable bugs (injection, auth bypasses, committed secrets, SSRF, unsafe deserialization, vulnerable dependency changes) with severity, attack path, and proposed fix, enforceable against team rules. Trial credits cover roughly 50 changes (Teams) and 500 (Enterprise) for 10 days. Source: Cursor – Rollouts And Security Reviewer
Cursor Projects (September 10, 2026)
Projects add a coordinator agent that plans work and delegates implementation to parallel agents ("thousands of subagents"), maintains shared context files that sync across cloud and local machines, and can subscribe to Slack channels, schedules, and PRs to trigger work unprompted. Rolling out in beta to all users. Source: Cursor – Projects
Self-Hosted Machines (September 2, 2026)
Cloud agents can now execute entirely on machines in your own network (code, build outputs, and secrets stay internal), with My Machines for individuals, team pools that grow and hibernate on demand, execution on existing sandbox providers (AWS Lambda, Coder, Cloudflare, Daytona, Modal, Namespace, Vercel, E2B), and computer use on Linux and Mac. Source: Cursor – Self Hosted Machines
Token Efficiency Research (September 23, 2026)
Cursor published harness-efficiency results: 7% total token-cost reduction for users, a 66% system-prompt trim, 60% cut in static tool-description tokens by offloading rarely used tools (each was needed in under 20% of conversations), 20% fewer cold cache misses via explicit GPT-5.6 cache breakpoints, and 1.6% fewer cache-read tokens by numbering only every 10th line of file reads. An earlier change moving MCP tools to dynamic context cut tokens 46.9% for sessions using MCP tools. Source: Cursor – Improved Token Efficiency
OpenAI Models Depart November 12 (August 28, 2026)
OpenAI notified SpaceX it will wind down the contract supplying OpenAI models to Cursor with a proposed shutoff of November 12, 2026, citing inability to trust SpaceX within its terms of service after Musk-admitted xAI distillation violations; no future models will be provided, with Astra accountability explicitly named. OpenAI models remain listed and billable in Cursor's docs until the cutoff. Source: OpenAI – Our Decision On Cursor Following Its Acquisition By Spacex
Enterprise Customer Signals (September 2026)
Cursor published customer stories from Nokia (50M+ lines of code analyzed in two weeks, Sep 2), Basis (long-horizon accounting agents, Sep 4), and Grab (Cursor rolled out to Design, Ops, and Engineering, Sep 15). Source: Cursor
AIUC-1 Certification (August 13, 2026, carried into September)
Cursor earned the AIUC-1 certification for agent security and reliability; the site footer now displays SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, and AIUC-1. Source: Cursor – Aiuc 1 , Cursor – Pricing
Community Signals
OpenAI's Departure: 852-Point Thread on Lock-In and Model Mix
OpenAI's decision post drew the month's highest engagement on a Cursor-related story (852 points, 545 comments). The dominant themes were multi-model lock-in dying, whether Anthropic follows suit, and what Cursor is worth as a Grok/Composer vehicle.
- rgbrenner: "Anthropic already banned xAI for very similar ToS violations earlier this year... It'll be interesting to see if Anthropic applies their ban to Cursor, or if that datacenter deal they signed with Musk changes anything." News – Item
- redox99: "Cursor's business model of reselling others' APIs had its days numbered... Cursor is already kind of useless for third party models unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars. It's only worth it if you're going to use mostly grok/composer." News – Item
- rippeltippel: "The thing that keeps me using it is precisely the ability to switch between models: I usually do brainstorm/planning with Sol or Terra, then let Composer (free) deal with the implementation... Cursor is cheaper than having two separate subscriptions." News – Item
- ergocoder: "Cursor founder just tweeted that he was sad to see this ban and that OpenAI model represented around 5% of total usage." News – Item
Thread: News – Item (852 points, 545 comments). Source: OpenAI – Our Decision On Cursor Following Its Acquisition By Spacex
Grok 4.7 Thread: Benchmark Skepticism and Astra Absence (609 points, 540 comments)
The Grok 4.7 launch thread focused on benchmark presentation (GPT-6 Astra missing from comparison charts) and token-burn pricing concerns rather than capability gains.
- moojacob: "Apparently Grok 4.7 has 40% more weights than Grok 4.6, but the price ($6 output token, $2 input) is the same... I find the post cursor groks are phenomenal at frontend web development, though Claude is much better at backend ruby." News – Item
- mchusma: "4.7 is definitely slower & more expensive. It feels kind of like they really had it burn tokens to claw up the benchmarks." News – Item
- kristofferR: "What's with the deceptive graph on top? Not including Astra can't have been an oversight, did the model compare poorly to it?" News – Item
- Jcampuzano2: "Cursorbench explicitly tests with Cursor as the harness, and OpenAI doesn't allow them to use Astra in Cursor." News – Item
Thread: News – Item (609 points, 540 comments). Source: Cursor – Grok
Failed sources
Reddit search (old.reddit.com/search/?q=cursor+ide) returned a login wall and could not be used this cycle; Reddit sentiment is not included. Reuters' August article on the OpenAI split returned HTTP 401; the OpenAI primary-source post was used instead.
Reddit recovery (added 2026-10-03)
A logged-out Reddit recovery pass (October 3) found no Cursor-specific posts above 100 votes in the month's top results (matches were memes and unrelated uses of "cursor"); the only AI-adjacent hit was generic, r/antiai's "All AI has Gone Down" (10K upvotes, 918 comments) Reddit – All Ai Has Gone Down . Community scale: r/cursor 98K weekly visitors, 2.5K weekly contributions; r/CursorAI 5.7K weekly visitors.
Enterprise Readiness
| Feature | Available? | Details |
|---|---|---|
| SSO (SAML/OIDC) | Yes | Teams and Enterprise plans. Source: Cursor – Pricing |
| SCIM | Yes | Enterprise plan (seat management). Source: Cursor – Pricing |
| Audit logs | Yes | Enterprise plan (audit logs and service accounts), plus access, network, and audit controls for Grok Bot. Source: Cursor – Pricing |
| IP indemnity | No | Not mentioned on the pricing page, enterprise pages, or security certifications. |
| Data residency | Yes (US-only) | Enterprise, per-team: inference, processing, and storage stay in the US for eligible models (GPT, Claude 4.6+, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Composer, Grok 4.5) at a 10% pricing uplift; EU+Iceland inference-only on request; not supported for BYOK; roughly two weeks to enable. Source: Cursor – Privacy And Data Governance |
| HIPAA | No | Not mentioned on any fetched page. |
| Air-gapped / on-prem | Partial | Self-hosted machines (Sep 2) keep tool execution, code, and secrets on your infrastructure, but model inference still requires Cursor connectivity; no fully air-gapped deployment. Source: Cursor – Self Hosted Machines |
| SLA | No | No publicly documented SLA; a status page exists at status.cursor.com. Source: Cursor – Pricing |
| Admin controls (RBAC) | Yes | Repository, model, and MCP access controls; auto-run, browser, and network controls; model access control by user group; Privacy Mode on by default for Enterprise with MDM enforcement via Allowed Team IDs. Sources: Cursor – Pricing , Cursor – Privacy And Data Governance |
| Certifications / encryption | Yes | SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, AIUC-1 certified; TLS 1.2+ in transit, AES-256 at rest, CMEK for Enterprise. Sources: Cursor – Pricing , Cursor – Privacy And Data Governance |
Transparency Gaps
| Gap | Details | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Included usage amounts | No plan publishes token, request, or hour counts for either pool; Pro says "generous limits for Grok" and the docs say the Cursor Models pool has "significantly more included usage" with no denominators anywhere. | High |
| OpenAI transition terms | OpenAI models shut off November 12, 2026, but Cursor has published no migration credits, pricing guidance, or recommended-replacement guidance for GPT-standardized teams; the Sol promo (through Nov 21) outlives the shutoff by 9 days with no explanation. | High |
| Self-run benchmark comparability | Grok 4.7's headline table is Cursor-published on CursorBench (Cursor's own harness) with mixed effort levels (xHigh vs High vs Max), and GPT-6 Astra is excluded because OpenAI withholds it from Cursor; no third-party coding benchmark verifies the 46.3% figure. | High |
| Rollouts / Security Review pricing | Trial credits are quantified (roughly 50 changes Teams, 500 Enterprise, 10 days) but the per-change cost after the trial, and whether bots consume pooled or billed usage, is undisclosed. | Medium |
| Annual plan pricing | The pricing page's Monthly/Yearly toggle did not expose annual prices in machine-readable form; annual prices for all plans are undisclosed this cycle. | Low |
| Data residency model eligibility | The US residency eligible list includes Grok 4.5 but omits Grok 4.6 and Grok 4.7, the current flagship; whether the newer Groks can run in-region is undocumented. | Medium |
| Privacy Mode (Legacy) resolution | The June iOS app downgrade away from strict Privacy Mode (Legacy) still has no published fix or restoration path in current docs; docs describe only the current Privacy Mode and team enforcement. | Medium |
| Grok 4.7 architecture | "Larger base than Grok 4.6" and "40% more weights" (the latter only via an HN comment) are the only scale disclosures; parameter counts, training compute, and the model card's contents are not summarized on the product page. | Low |