[poll] What's your current opinion on Cursor's pricing?

Discussions
1

A. Free User
B. I don’t care
C. Not too bad
D. Limiting, but I get what I pay for
E. Limiting, but Cursor’s features make up for it
F. There is no added value in terms of API costs, but I use it anyway
G. Very limiting, want to switch
H. Good - I get what I pay for + slightly more
I. Great

2

I

  • 60+10+??? for Pro, 200+200+??? for Ultra
  • free Grok Code Fast
  • free trial periods upon the launch of some models
3

image

3 Likes
4

My quick summary:

  • I code every day for at least 8 hours, heavily utilize AI features and have never exceeded Ultra tier limits
  • it is not difficult to pay for Ultra tier with a software engineering job
  • if you need anything beyond Ultra tier, you are doing something wrong (vibecoding is wrong)
  • if you dont utilize Cursor’s extra features (browser, cloud agents and similar), there is no added value in terms of API costs
  • there is a lot of bugs, some take way too long to get fixed, new ones are introduced every other version

Cursor can’t magically provide more than what you pay for, they need to be profitable and are limited by LLM providers’ operating costs. Also they need to make money so they can improve and build up the “added value” of their product. If you do not have opportunities to work in tech or get enough money for a higher subscription tier, that is unfortunate, but not a Cursor’s problem, in my opinion - the AI compute costs the same everywhere. :man_shrugging:
Cursor builds on top of LLM providers and makes money off of unused subscription bandwidth. If you do not like the price, take it up with LLM providers or their hardware/energy providers. Nothing much Cursor can do about it. However there is no excuse for the amount of bugs being introduced.

5

If you prefer working exclusively with Claude models, you can easily exceed your Ultra quota. I started working on Ultra in mid-December, mainly using GPT-5.2 XHigh, for less than 8 hours each day, and I estimate that by the end of the period my usage will be around $500-600 if I don’t slow down.

But I’m currently working on a really hard project where I have to invent new things in order to invent other new things. I think that with a full working day and week I will aim for a window of $600-1000, depending on the complexity of the project, and $1000-2000 if I use Opus 4.5.

1 Like
6

D

After a couple months of attempting to use Claude and running up an ultra bill i eventually switched to only using auto mode and moved down to pro. I also turned off on demand usage. I’ve been on auto only for about 4 months now and have not had any issues. Every once and awhile I’ll want to hit Claude in plan mode and get blocked because I’m at my budget limit or whatever but I don’t find it too limiting.

Strong advocate of auto mode, it gets the job done you just have to get used to it.