I have been a Pro plan ($20/mo) user for about a year and STRICTLY and use “Auto” mode for all my requests. I am looking for clarification on how the “fair use” or “usage limit” is being enforced, as I am seeing a massive difference between November and December behavior despite similar usage patterns.
The Issue: In December, I hit my usage limit and was switched to “On-Demand” (paid) pricing after using about $50 worth of resources. However, looking at my logs for November, I used significantly more resources without ever hitting a limit.
My Usage Data (from usage-events logs):
November 2025:
Total Usage Cost: ~$147.00
Total Requests: ~690
Avg Tokens per Request: ~450k
Result: 100% “Included” (Never hit a limit, never asked to pay).
December 2025 (Current):
Total Usage Cost: ~$50.00
Total Requests: ~140
Avg Tokens per Request: ~290k
Result: Limit Hit. Switched to “On-Demand” pricing.
My Questions:
Has the policy for “Auto” mode changed recently? It seems I was allowed to use ~7x my plan cost in November (“Included”), but in December, the limit was enforced much strictly.
Is “Auto” mode no longer treated as “Unlimited” (with a slow pool fallback)? It seems that once the dollar limit is hit in Auto mode, I am forced to pay for overage rather than falling back to a slow queue. (you can see the screenshot in the image i attached in the end. its the same with all modes)
Was I simply “lucky” in November, or is the new enforcement on Auto mode intended to be this strict (capping at ~$20-$50)?
A reminder: Models | Cursor Docs . In short, you need to decide what models you can afford to use. Personally, if you have a limited budget, use GPT-5-mini, its fast ,a logical model, and goes at $2 per Million tokens. Thats 10 M tokens to work with before more usage is required.. Codex is still buggy IMHO within cursor. And nano is not smart enough for development tasks…
Auto was SUPPOSED to be the budget-friendly option. It’s what has been, and always was, recommended to save tokens. To save costs. Every “plan upgrade” has taken it above and above, but always left auto alone. Able to survive.
Sadly, Cursor has done it again. They changed their pricing without proper notice to customers—no email, no newsletter, nothing. Cursor does the job, but this kind of approach is frustrating for customers. Acting this way will only push people away as soon as a new alternative becomes available.
Yes, they are known to fraud. I had opted out for their new pricing system and they changed it without notification two months ago. Declined to address the issue and only avoided the subject.
