I recently ran into something that I think could be improved in the Cursor dashboard.
My account showed 88% used (12% remaining), so I naturally assumed I still had some Composer/Agent usage available. However, every Composer request immediately failed with a “You’ve hit your usage limit” message.
After contacting support, they explained that this is expected behaviour because the Free plan has separate quotas for Agent usage and Tab completions. The dashboard percentage is a combined view, so it’s possible to have Agent usage at 100% while the overall usage still shows less than 100%.
I don’t think this is very intuitive. If one feature can no longer be used, the dashboard should make that obvious.
A few ideas that would make this much clearer:
Show separate progress bars for each quota (e.g. Agent, Tab, and any other tracked usage).
Display the remaining allowance for each category.
If Agent usage is exhausted, show 100% Agent used instead of only an overall percentage like 88% used.
Link the “You’ve hit your usage limit” error directly to the relevant usage breakdown so users can immediately see which limit they’ve reached.
This would make it much easier to understand what’s actually available and would avoid the confusion of seeing “12% remaining” while a major feature is already unusable.
Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback. This is a real pain point. On the Free plan, Agent and Tab have separate quotas, but the dashboard shows a single overall percentage. That’s why you can see 12% remaining while Agent is already fully used up. I agree it’s not intuitive.
I’ve noted your ideas (separate bars by category, showing 100% for an exhausted quota, and linking the You’ve hit your usage limit error directly to the right breakdown) and we’ll take a look. I can’t share an ETA yet, but the signal is clear and helpful.
@deanrie One thing I recently found is an option that shows your % of API used. It puts a line at the bottom of the agent window and since I’ve enabled it I have had no use for the ring.
To enable this, search “usage” in Cursor Settings and in the Agents section set Usage Summary to Always.
I can also update my original request if that helps. I’m not sure any enhancement is needed. Well, a small enhancement would be to enable this by default.
Hey, great find, thanks for sharing. Usage Summary = Always is a handy way to keep API usage in view, and it’ll solve the constant need to double-check the ring for a lot of users.
Enabling it by default makes sense.
That said, the request for separate bars by category Agent vs Tab still stands. Usage Summary shows the overall percentage, not a quota breakdown, so the confusion of “12% left, but Agent is already blocked” doesn’t go away. So both signals are useful. I can’t share an ETA for changes yet.
I feel I keep learning about this tool. So Agent vs Tab is the same as API vs Total, yes? There is a third number here which is Auto. If you click on the percentage used line at the bottom of the Agent window, it takes you to your usage summary and it is pretty easy to equate the number you are seeing to the number in the window. If I had this from the beginning I’m not sure I would have been frustrated.
When I hover over the ring, I no longer see the percentage that fed into my original post. I thought maybe this was because I turned on showing API usage. I did toggle it back off and I still get nothing when mouse over the ring.
That aside, the XX% that I turned on is the percentage of API usage and it matches my usage page numbers. The ring seems to be percent of context used. So if I’m using GPT 5.5 with 272k context, the ring shows how much of the 272k I’ve used. So I see the ring as a drift warning gauge and the XX% at the bottom is how long I can use a specific model before it goes to Auto. If I change my model to Auto, the XX% used changes to my Total percentage. Some may expect it to show Auto percentage used but either number will track correctly.
So really there are three numbers and I’m fine with the way it’s implemented. Not sure what is happening with my lack of info on mouse over of the ring but I don’t really need it anymore.