I am a new user to Cursor and AI coding. Cursor places GPT 5.5 medium as default in development agent. I found it costs $12 per run for just editting a 4 page Admin Console. It is crazy. I have spent out $20 in Pro Plan + $12 in On-demand spending. How can I use Cursor most cost effectively? Should I upgrade to Pro+ Plan for $60 per month? Or should I change to Auto LLM model? Please advise. Cheers
Any Cursor support staff to respond to my post and make the best suggestion? Thanks
hi @Joel_Young1 welcome!
Why it added up so fast: GPT-5.5 is one of the most powerful (and most expensive) frontier models, billed at the raw API rate of $5 / 1M input and $30 / 1M output. It’s great for genuinely hard, multi-step problems, but may be too much horsepower for daily driving.
I definitely recommend experimenting with Auto or Composer 2. Here’s some more info:
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- Auto is fixed-rate at $1.25 / 1M input and $6 / 1M output — roughly 5× cheaper on output than GPT-5.5.
- Composer 2 is Cursor’s own model, even cheaper at $0.50 / $2.50 per 1M, and purpose-built for agentic coding.
- Both draw from a separate, much more generous usage pool that doesn’t touch your $20 API allowance — so you’ll get a lot more runway on the same Pro plan.
The bold part is really important to note - Auto and Composer 2 have a separate usage pool from the included API usage pool that GPT 5.5 use draws from.
On Pro+ vs Pro - if you have extensive daily use of Agents, you may find that the Pro + plan is a better value for your needs.
Hi Kelvin, thanks for your message suggestions! Since I have already run out the $20 API quota, I will have to switch to Auto + Composer or upgrade to Pro+. However in my current development project, it pins at GPT 5.5 Medium (see the attached file). Please advise how could I switch to Auto + Composer for current development. Thanks!
Hi Joel, are you in the Cursor app or on https://cursor.com/agents?
Hi Kevin, I am on https://cursor.com/agents. The screenshot I shared is in my current development project, not the new Agent. I can select the AI model in new Agent, but not in current development agent. The GPT-5.5 Medium is pinned there. Thanks!
Ah I see thanks for clarifying @Joel_Young1
This is actually intended behavior, once you’ve spun the environment with a particular model you can’t change it in that session. The good news is that it’s very fast and easy to spin up a new one, so you can simply spin up a new cloud agent environment with your desired model for the same repo.
Hi Kelvin, thanks again! I will start a new agent environment, but how to import the existing development project? I use GitHub to store the repo. Thanks!
Hi @Joel_Young1 ! Yes, you can work on the same branch and the same repo, just select the relevant branch and repo name on https://cursor.com/agents before you kick off the new chat!
Got it! Thank you so much 