Hey, good question. It depends on your pricing plan type:
Request-based legacy pricing:
Built-in subagents Explore, Bash, and Browser always use Composer, and you can’t change the model. The only option is to enable MAX mode, then subagents inherit the parent agent’s model. This costs more requests though.
Token-based pricing:
For custom subagents, you can set the model directly in the .md file using the model field in the frontmatter, like model: claude-4.6-sonnet or model: inherit to inherit from the parent.
More details here: Subagents | Cursor Docs
Similar thread with an answer from our team: I want to change the model used by Subagent system
The team is aware of this request. More flexible model settings for subagents are on the radar. For now, for specific tasks I’d recommend creating custom subagents with the model you need.
Let me know if you’ve got any other questions.