Since the latest release a couple of days ago, I’ve noticed that many models are now gated behind MAX.
Is this an intentional and permanent change, or is it something that’s still being evaluated? Will we that have legacy personal plans be able to use ANY frontier model without loosing half of our monthly on 1 prompt? Has the recent acquisition influenced this change?
some clarification on the reasoning behind this change and whether we can expect the current model availability to remain the same going forward.
Hey, thanks for the question. There’s an important nuance here.
Yes, this is an intentional change. On the legacy request-based plan, frontier models are only available for manual selection via Max Mode, and they’re billed at the model’s token rate. This rule is tied to the plan and the frontier category, not to the price of a specific model.
That said, you’re not losing access to strong models. Auto mode will still route to current models within your included requests and will pick up new ones as older ones get phased out. So you won’t end up in a situation where you have no access to powerful models at all. Max Mode is specifically for direct manual selection of the newest frontier models.
If you want flat-rate access to the newest models without Max Mode, that’s on the current token-based plan.
On a cheaper way to get new models on the legacy plan, I hear you and I’ll pass the feedback along. I can’t share any timeline or policy changes right now, so I won’t promise anything.
Sadly I am no Auto user for various reasons which i wont go into here, it has its uses ofcourse! I understand you guys have to make product decisions and paths to take, Im curios why legacy for personal got gutted. Was it beeing abused that bad? If so there would be no hard task to setup safeguards no? Anyway, I like your product which Im sure many of us “small” solo devs are with limited budget, Im only afraid this will drive us into other products.
One idea though, why not: Allow limited daily or weekly usage of MAX-only models on legacy plans so users can still rely on them occasionally.
Thanks for the detailed feedback, Pat, and for the idea of adding limited daily or weekly access to MAX-only models on legacy plans. That’s a solid suggestion.
I can’t share the reasons behind specific product decisions for legacy plans or promise any changes, but we do hear feedback from solo developers on a tight budget, and it’s helpful for prioritization.
If there’s an update to the policy for legacy plans, I’ll let you know.
Legacy users have signed up to use frontier models from day 1. Supported Cursor on early days, it was working out well for Cursor when these users supported Cursor’s growth. I understand model costs are going up, but this is not end-user problem. Contract and plan description is clear. 500 fast requests and unlimited slow requests.
I dont understand while Opus 4.6 is enabled, 4.7-4.8 are not. Models & Pricing | Cursor Docs shows exact same pricing for all these 3 models… Sonnet 5 or GPT 5.5 is even cheaper than Opus 4.6, but still not enabled!? What will happen when Antropic stops support for Opus 4.6, when OpenAI stops 5.3? Will you lock us to Auto mode which does not give any control to developer?
You are saying frontier models are max mode only. Howcome Sonnet 5 is a frontier model?
This is a clear breach of the contract, defintely you cannot do this especially half-way through yearly subscription!
Will Cursor honor the contract and plan description that we agreed to? I remember you initially had multipliers for some models, and people agreed to it to an extend. Then you started locking things behind MAX mode which clearly described as context being run on MAX not running a frontier model on default settings?