Cursor FAQ
8 common questions about Cursor — answered.
Cursor offers a free Hobby plan with 2,000 code completions and 50 premium requests per month. The Pro plan is $20/month with unlimited completions and 500 premium requests. The Business plan is $40/user/month with admin controls, SSO, and enforced privacy mode.
Yes, Cursor has a free Hobby tier that includes 2,000 code completions and 50 premium (slow) requests per month. It's enough to evaluate the tool, but serious daily use typically requires the Pro plan at $20/month for unlimited completions and 500 fast premium requests.
Cursor is a fork of VS Code — it looks and feels identical, supports the same extensions, themes, and keybindings, but adds deep AI integration. The key differences: Cursor has a built-in AI chat panel, inline code generation (Cmd+K), multi-file editing with AI context, and automatic codebase indexing. VS Code requires separate extensions (like Copilot) for AI features.
Cursor is an AI-powered IDE best for developers who want AI-assisted editing within a visual editor with inline suggestions and visual diffs. Claude Code is a terminal-native agent best for autonomous multi-file operations, complex debugging, and codebase-wide tasks. Many developers use both — Cursor for everyday editing and Claude Code for heavy-lifting refactors.
Cursor supports all programming languages that VS Code supports — Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Go, Rust, C/C++, Ruby, PHP, Swift, Kotlin, and many more. Since it's built on VS Code, any language with a VS Code extension works in Cursor, including syntax highlighting, linting, and AI-powered completions.
Cursor offers a Privacy Mode (enabled by default on Business plans) that ensures your code is never stored or used for training. On the free and Pro plans, you can enable Privacy Mode in settings. Cursor uses encrypted connections and SOC 2 compliant infrastructure. Your code is sent to AI models for processing but is not retained.
Both offer AI code completion, but Cursor provides a more integrated AI experience. Cursor includes a chat panel with full codebase context, multi-file editing via Composer, and lets you choose between AI models (GPT-4, Claude). Copilot focuses primarily on inline suggestions and is tightly integrated with GitHub. Cursor is a standalone editor; Copilot is an extension for existing editors.
Cursor requires an internet connection for AI features (completions, chat, and inline edits) since these are processed by cloud-based AI models. However, the editor itself works offline for basic code editing — you just lose the AI capabilities. There is no local/offline AI model option currently.