Cursor agent Mode with custom Claude API key

Discussion
1

Hello,

I have recently started playing around with cursor and i have added my claude API key to it and tried to use its agent mode with Claude Sonnet 3.7 selected as model.However i noticed cursor still using premium requests while using it this way and it seems not everything is routed via the claude API directly. In fact it seems to barely use the API as claude charged me $0.02 while burning through 25% of my requests. Does anyone know if this is intended and if i can exlusively use the claude API? think cursor prices its self hosted models way too high.
I’d be happy to pay but with this pricing i would end up paying $100 every month just to play around with it in my free time. I’d be happy with a cheaper support tier that allows me to use my own keys but if i still need a claude subscription for the premium requests then i dont see this working. How do you guys use it?

/EDIT
After playing around with it some more i figured out that custom API keys only seem to be used for chat, trying to use agent while having a custom API key activated now results in an error for me. I don’t think cursor is a viable option for me. At least not at the current pricing

3

“Agent and Edit rely on custom models that cannot be billed to an API key. Please use a Pro or Business subscription and/or disable API keys. Ask should still work.”

You can only use Ask at this point, no agent they changed this up very recently. I’m switching over to Cline with VS Code. VS code just released full agent mode on April 7th (yesterday). I got too much money in my billing account with Anthropic to not use it. Cursor’s $0.05 per max request is a bit steep for me so I’m kinda forced to sit this one out at this point.

Edit: yes VS Code is the play, it was an easy conversion, you can use your Anthropic API key directly now with full agent features