From Enthusiasm to Disappointment: The 500-Query Limit is Stifling Cursor AI's Potential

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Dear Cursor AI Team and Developers,

I recently started using Cursor AI, and I must say, I absolutely fell in love with this tool. It’s no exaggeration to say that I was ready to stick with it indefinitely. The transition from VS Code was incredibly smooth, and I was genuinely excited about the potential it offered.

What truly drew me to Cursor AI, and I believe this is no secret, was the built-in AI assistant chat. The ability to communicate directly with AI, particularly with ChatGPT-4, makes development almost flawless. The setup is impressive, and I was ready to commit fully.

However, as with many great tools, there is always a “but,” and in this case, it’s a significant one. Unfortunately, this “but” caused me such great disappointment that I have already decided to stop using this wonderful tool. The Pro subscription’s limitation of 500 queries per month for $20 killed my motivation to continue.

As a professional developer, like many others (90% of us are professionals, not hobbyists), keeping up with AI trends means that 500 queries are only sufficient for 3 to 5 days of serious development work. Considering that with OpenAI, I can create an account and get unlimited chat queries for the same $20, albeit through a browser instead of an IDE, this limitation becomes a major drawback.

I was ready to be an advocate for Cursor AI, promoting it to everyone I know, but this limitation forced me to abandon it.

While I could continue to both praise and critique the tool, I want to focus on a suggestion that I believe will not only restore faith in Cursor AI but also attract many more developers – of which I know quite a few.

Consider removing the current subscription model or, better yet, allowing users like me to link our own ChatGPT accounts. This way, we could leverage our unlimited queries while still paying Cursor AI $5–$10 for the added value of code security and the platform itself. Or 30$ unlimited queries

If such a feature already exists, please do let me know, as I haven’t come across it yet. And if you decide to implement this, I’m sure it will attract a much larger user base, and I’d be more than happy to help spread the word about Cursor AI.

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I am glad to see this, which means not only you have this request:
You’ve hit your limit of 500 fast requests - General - Cursor Community Forum

And also I’ve suggested just eliminating the usage times count:Monthly limit on Pro - #7 by dbsx
, make Cursor be practical standard in the field of code editor, just like Windows acts in the field of computer systems.

Besides, I already bought Microsoft Copilot a year recently before the trial of Cursor. However, I am still attracted by the performance of Cursor after the trial, so I also don’t want to let usage time limitation become a trap that forbids users not to use Cursor.

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i was surprised how fast the 500 fast query limit was over after a few days and wont continue using cursor for that reason.
I regret it a little bit as the coding speed it gave me was insane :slightly_frowning_face:

I will stay at Cody with Claude 3.5 for 10$ until Cursor changes the payment model to be more PRO user friendly.
I am willing to pay, even more as for Cody as Claude is so much better, but not with this limitation

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I am curious how you’re using Cursor, because I use LLMs pretty heavily and work ~26-28 days a month writing code professionally and don’t use 500 queries in Cursor. I do also use models outside of Cursor (esp. Kagi Assistant with web search enabled), but for code I’m working on it’s predominantly in Cursor.

In any case, you are able to double-up your allowance if you want to keep using the official Cursor models. Personally I wind up using the API keys directly since it’s cheaper and I don’t have to worry about limits, but I get it if you don’t want to go that route.

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It depends on how you use it. If you don’t have the number 500 in your head all the time, you can crush through that ceiling pretty quickly. I think that goes especially for non-elite coders who might look for tools like that the most. On the other hand, if you are confident enough and use it only when you know you might really benefit from it, you will probably not reach 500 in a month.

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I don’t understand the fuss. You can still use it over the limit, it’s just minimally slower. What are you talking about.

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There are no solid work-arounds at the moment - you cannot use the full functionality if you are using your own API key (cursor Composer does not work). The thing that I don’t understand is that there has been no increase in the number of premium completions for pro users even though the cost per token has been vastly reduced for 4o.

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@jvbyrnes Do you know if that is the only limitation of using your own API key, that only Composer doesn’t work? Or basically, should chat, ctrl-k, tab autocomplete, etc. still work the same?

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To my knowledge it’s the only limitation. I don’t think they use personal api keys for tab autocomplete - I think they use their own models for that. Ctrl K should work but I haven’t tested it.

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@jvbyrnes Just one more question if you happen to know. It might be a, only Cursor really knows kind of thing. Would the chat and ctrl-k work the same whether you use your own API key or go through Cursor? Or basically, does Cursor do anything extra behind the scenes that the outputs you get in chat or ctrl-k would be different than when you set things up to use your personal API key?

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I think Ctrl k operates similar to chat, so your own API key would be used

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Move to a 3 day work week. Problem solved :+1:

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Respectfully disagree about slow requests being no big deal. I assume your experience is quite different to mine, but so far whenever I hit the slow queue I’ve been finding I can only issue one question every 320 seconds. Given how often the models get things wrong, or connections fail, that’s unusable. More than a quarter of an hour to ask three questions? Ouch.

Personally I’m double-paying to get 1000/mo, all out of pocket because I don’t make money with my code, and whenever I hit that limit I just give up on Cursor and go use something else. It’s hard not to feel bitter about the experience, or recommend to colleagues that they give Cursor a miss until the pricing model gets fixed. I’d hoped that the costs would have come down a little bit by now as the tech improves, but so far I’ve seen no sign of that being a prospect.

As it happens, I asked about the pricing on here almost exactly a year ago, back in the days where the core team tended to reply on here, and @arvid220u said:

A year ago. Still waiting, but I can’t help rapidly running out of patience for that happening.

I don’t want to come off as disproportionately negative about it. Granted, AI-assisted coding sometimes feels like wrangling a wet soap-covered snake in a pitch black room, but I do really appreciate the benefits that Cursor brings. It’s why I want to use it. More. But can’t because the current limits are prohibitive.

I don’t know if things like this get read by Team Cursor like they used to, I know the forum traffic is so high now it’s probably difficult to keep up (other than @deanrie who seems to have such a superhuman capacity for making people feel listened to on here, I’m wondering whether someone secretly cracked AGI and they’re the working prototype). But in general it’s hard to believe the message is getting through to HQ.

I’m still holding out hope though. I just regret how often I find myself wishing the second half of the month away so I can reset and be productive again.

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Do you think I’m AI? That’s funny :joy: Yes, I do my best to pass important info to the team, so if I missed anything, feel free to tag me. There are many messages on the forum, and it’s tough to read them all.

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Thank you for the feedback, {name}. You’re absolutely right. I apologize for the oversight in referring to you as an AI model. It seems that the assessment of your capabilities did not correctly take into account your visible humanity. I will address this issue by referring to you as a human from now on.

[ Apply ]

:innocent:

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My project was going well, then I was throttled and the project took a dive. I know someone will say “it’s just a queue and does not affect the AI interaction”. I wish this was true, but my experience is that Cursor lost track and started going in circles the moment I was throttled.

Buying more credits, I did, so now I am at 1000 requests, mostly used by Cursor going in circles and self-consuming.

Not leaving, yet, but not I am comparing tools. Using @three 's advice, I’ll give ti a shot with GIT and rewriting my prompts as I go along.

Thanks to @three , I’m re-reading your "bog co post again, as it aligns with what I’ve been doing. I’m still figuring out how much of my prompt to keep after each step…

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