I must point out that this is something I see repeating itself there’s a certain lack of cooperation with customers that I don’t quite understand the cause of. It’s not just about money; it’s in many details in the way customer service works, the responses, the overall management not being organized enough. I find it hard to put it into words, but you described it well.
However, you didn’t give a solution you only pointed out that you would manage the current situation in a more transparent way, which is an interesting direction, but it doesn’t help customers who are also looking for a cheaper plan.
Transparency is the foundation. No one can provide any real solutions without it.
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They say that everything they’re doing is to achieve transparency… let’s see.
Unless your company is losing tons of money every hour under the current situation.
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I would include the usage-based pricing in the table of charges instead of “Cost to You” showing $0
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That’s good…
but you’re solving a minor problem of transparency, not the problem for customers who want a fixed payment.
If I was in charge, I would make the service really cheap and effective, get tons of early adopters, and grow a massive user base all at a loss. Then once the market share is secure, I would try to inch the price up (or slowly remove value in features, which is the same as increasing the price) to capitalize on the promotional “marketing” campaign of gaining a large market share early on. Of course I could not tell the customers this, so I will just make changes to the service gradually instead of all at once, and offer unlimited auto to soothe the price changes and to secure annual membership funding, then remove Unlimited Auto for new customers, and gradually reduce the effectiveness of Auto for anyone grandfathered into it until they are forced to upgrade beyond Pro or pay per token. I’d deploy a few people to the forums to constantly reassure people what is going on, all while knowing in three weeks it will all change again. The customer won’t know they’re getting boiled. Profit!
But in all honesty, I am just going to use Cursor until the cost becomes greater than the value, or a similar competitor appears and is worth the cost of changing workflows.
Genius the best idea so far. We’ll implement it.
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You forgot to mention that deployed people should change their nicknames on the forum every time you do one of those things.
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I’d work with all the model providers to give enough discount so using the model through cursor is cheaper than using it yourself with your own API key, or at least the same. If that’s even possible, then it’s making more money while also not costing the users more. I’d also implement several different structures of pricing, sort of how it was before where there was ‘slow but included in monthly’ requests and fast that cost some $, and max which cost a lot of $.
They’re already doing part of that after all, if they claim you’re getting more than you’re paying for, but people don’t feel it because the balance runs out quickly, the direction is clearly right. The thing is, not all providers are willing to agree to the same terms.
This isn’t a wise move. The AI coding industry is evolving at breakneck speed, and disclosing your costs is both pointless and self-destructive. Competitors could infer your customer base — even your team’s workload — from your API usage. At the very least, this is not the strategy you’d expect from a market leader.
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I hear the concern about competitors, but I don’t think transparency around costs would destroy Cursor, in fact, I believe it’s essential for long-term trust and sustainability.
Right now, users are seeing a 10x cost increase without a clear explanation, and the current messaging feels like word salad rather than transparency. That undermines confidence not just in the pricing model, but in the company as a whole.
If Cursor is planning to go public, these cost structures and margins will have to be disclosed anyway in SEC filings like the 10-K. Revenue, cost of goods sold, gross margins, and user churn are all standard disclosures and any sophisticated competitor or investor will easily dissect those numbers.
So the idea that being honest now would somehow hand over secrets to competitors doesn’t really hold up, they’ll get those numbers eventually, and likely in more detail.
What’s actually more dangerous is losing trust from the current user base. Developers and technical teams don’t just care about functionality, we care about predictability, clarity, and fair pricing. If users feel misled or confused, they’ll walk and many already are. Competitors don’t need access to Cursor’s margins to take customers they just need to be transparent and affordable.
In the end, clarity builds loyalty. It doesn’t mean revealing every pricing lever or business strategy, but it does mean honestly explaining why customer costs have risen so dramatically, what’s behind the “20% markup,” and how pricing will behave going forward.
That’s not weakness, THAT is being a market leader. And I think Cursor would be better for it.
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Many of us already pay for the model directy from the creator, easier way to switch to their API would perhaps be cool addition, or to dispatch some load to that API.
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losing trust from the current user base.
Expecting a fast-growing market leader to gain an edge by “being transparent” makes little sense. Pricing should be based on token usage — segmenting customers and offering different tiers of service accordingly — much like how cloud providers sell their resources. Giving users clear options to choose from is a healthy business model. Of course, this doesn’t really apply when the entire industry is still burning cash. At this stage, worrying about cost disclosure is pointless — as long as the price stays below a developer’s salary, there will always be buyers.
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You also have to consider this. I realized we are all so clueless about pricing:
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haha
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At least the people here are in a good mood.
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Find a new employer that doesn’t act like Darth Vader and say “I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”
This post seems like the official trying to test the community, rather than being started by a third party.
I’m thinking about switching to Copilot now, at least with their free model I know which one to control, the price won’t change randomly, roocode/kilocode are also easy to use
At the same price, CC offers more value for money
Now wind-surf will also usher in new changes.
All of this isn’t about the cost, but about how much the investors and the stock price can inflate