Genuine question here and I’m aware not a very popular one considering I’m on a Cursor forum.
I’ve been subscribed to Cursor Pro for almost a year now and very happy so far, even with all the changes on the pricing.
In the last months, I’ve been using Visual Code with the Copilot subscription of $10. And I’m very happy with it actually, more than I thought I would be…
I don’t find any difference between using Visual Code or Cursor, to be honest. I change from one to another and other than some UI / UX differences, I’m happy with both.
Can someone point out to features that you use in Cursor that are not available in Visual Code? VSC has improved a lot on the last 6 months IMHO.
Something that I really like from Visual Code is that I can use my own API key to use some very cheap models that are not available by default on Copilot. Also, GPT5 mini is free and very good model for light stuff, I have even implemented complex stuff giving an extensive PR document made with Gemini 2.5 pro. GPT5 mini implemented it in one shot without any errors.
Premium requests on VSC are $0.04, which are very cheap compared to what you would pay on Cursor.
Difference 1 - I prefer paying cursor than Microsoft (which inevitably you are either with your data or your money with copilot)
Difference 2 - I’ve previously tried Copilot in the Pro+ mode and Windsurf Pro and: VScode with copilot does not disclose context windows; Windsurf doesn’t either but having pushed for disclosure from the models, I’ve had o3 back in the day telling me that the window was of 8k tokens. A model will often know because it’s also likely in the system prompt to ensure it can circumvent it. Now, I’m ok with being served with lower context than the limits, even in Cursor I never go past 6-10% of a context window with Claude Sonnet 4.5 at 1m tokens for example, but I’d rather know. I like to understand limitations and work with them.
Difference 3 (personal take): it’s a product that’s cool as sh*t. I always loved the all-black look of Cursor (yes I know there’s a light mode now that Ryo loves, but my eyes seem to deal better with staring at the sun than an app in light mode).
Difference 4: roadmaps. VSCode has the benefit and drawback of being owned by a huge business, albeit open source, the copilot offering is still backed by Microsoft. That’s great for scale, they likely can negotiate better deals (right now I don’t think this is is true though), but they’re also restricted by the workload the teams can handle, the fact they own 500 products, 450 of them in end-of-life. The guys at Cursor work with Cursor, for Cursor, building Cursor. There’s nothing better than a product that’s built with that level of focus.
Make your choice, I use Codex, Claude Code at times too, but personally: I both want and like to support the guys at Cursor. They will make mistakes but it’s an insane feat that they’ve gone from zero to this in very little time.
Businesses that have been standing for decades make mistakes constantly and these guys have managed to go through a lot of them already, a lot of users being upset at them… - and they’ve learned and will continue to.
Invest in people, not products.