I’m curious to hear how other team admins handle member changes on the Annual Team Plan.
Recently, I had to remove some members when a project wrapped up, and now I’m re-inviting them for a new project. This got me thinking about how to optimize seat usage and avoid any unexpected costs.
Here’s my current setup:
Total seats: 86
Active members: 13
Removed members still occupying seats: 66
Free seats: 7
I’m wondering:
How do you manage your team seats when members come and go throughout the year?
Do you have any strategies to free up seats from removed members without incurring extra charges?
Have you found any best practices to keep your team’s subscription costs efficient?
Hey, good question. If 66 removed members are still taking up seats, it’s definitely worth a closer look.
Here’s how seat management works right now:
If a member is removed and they used any credits during the current billing cycle, their seat stays active until the end of that cycle. When the plan renews, the seat count should update, and any prorated credit for removed members is applied to the next invoice.
On an annual plan, removed seats should free up at the end of the billing cycle. If 66 seats are still showing as used by removed members and it’s been like that for a while, we should have billing take a look.
I’d recommend emailing [email protected] with your team details so they can review your account and make sure seat count and billing are correct. With 66 removed members on an 86 seat plan, there might be billing adjustments needed.
Some general best practices for teams with rotating members:
Keep track of your billing cycle date so you know when removed seats will free up
Consider using the Unpaid Admin role for team managers who don’t need Cursor access. That way admin seats don’t count toward billing
If you have a larger team with frequent changes, the Enterprise plan supports pooled usage and more flexible seat management
Let me know if you have questions after you reach out to the billing team.
In case I accidentally remove the user and add back immediately how will this be treated. The setup is a teams plan with 5 seats paid annually. In my case it is treated as a new seat and I am being charged for it as an extra seat. But effectively it is 5 seats before and 5 seats post addition with no new members being added. How to do I reach out to the billing team regarding this issue. [email protected] had been not helpful so far
Hey @Pradeep_Kumar1, this is a really frustrating situation.
Here’s what’s happening: when a user is removed, their seat stays occupied until the end of the billing period if they used any credits. When you add the same user back, the system treats it like adding a new seat with a prorated charge, so until the end of the period you effectively get billed for 6 seats instead of 5.
At the end of the billing period, the removed seat should drop off and you’ll be back to 5 seats. The prorated credit for the removed user should also apply to your next invoice. But I get that this doesn’t help if you’re being overcharged right now.
I would like to highlight a key concern specifically related to the annual subscription.
As I am on an annual plan, the subscription is prepaid through 2027. However, based on your explanation, once a removed member has used any credits, their seat remains locked for the entire billing period and cannot be reassigned.
This creates a situation where:
We have already paid for the full year in advance
The removed member no longer has access
The seat cannot be reassigned to another user
The remaining value of that seat through 2027 cannot be utilized
In other words, we are paying for capacity that we are no longer able to use for the remainder of the annual term. This is particularly concerning under an annual subscription model, where usage rights are expected to be available throughout the prepaid period.
In our case, we are not expanding the team — we are simply replacing a member. However, the current policy results in both loss of usable capacity and additional charges for the replacement.
Could you please escalate this case or advise if any adjustment can be made? At minimum, we would expect either:
The seat to remain usable and transferable within the prepaid period, or
A billing adjustment to account for the unusable portion of the subscription
We value Cursor and would like to continue using it, but this situation makes it difficult to justify the current setup.
Thank you for your understanding, and I look forward to your response.
Hey @Yang_Xinyu, your concern is valid. On an annual plan, the until end of billing cycle policy hits especially hard since that means the seat is locked for the rest of the year.
This is a known limitation in how annual seat management works right now, and the team is aware of it. I can’t promise a timeline for changes, but your report helps us prioritize.
For your case with ticket T-B67592, I’d recommend replying to that thread at [email protected] and clearly requesting a billing adjustment for the locked seat. The billing team can review your account and make manual corrections if needed. If you’re not getting responses there, let me know and I’ll flag it internally.
In the meantime, for teams with frequent member rotation on annual plans, the Enterprise plan at Enterprise | Cursor Docs offers pooled usage, which handles this more flexibly.
Thank you for your response and for offering to help flag this internally — I really appreciate it.
I do have one follow-up concern regarding the positioning of the Teams plan.
In earlier communication with [email protected], it was mentioned that:
“Most universities get started right away with our self-serve Teams plan ($40/user/month). It includes centralized billing, privacy mode, SSO, usage analytics, and flexible seat management - so you can easily add, remove, or reassign seats across faculty and staff.”
However, based on the current behavior, once a member has used any credits, their seat becomes locked for the remainder of the annual billing period and cannot be reassigned. This makes it difficult to align with the expectation of “flexible seat management,” especially in environments like universities or research teams where member changes are relatively common.
Given this limitation, the current Teams setup does not seem well-suited for teams with member changes, despite being recommended as the default starting point. This creates a gap between the expected flexibility and the actual behavior.
Hi @deanrie Additionally, I would like to highlight an inconsistency that makes this situation particularly difficult to accept.
In standard subscription behavior, even if a subscription is cancelled, the service remains usable until the end of the billing period. However, in this case, after removing a member, the prepaid seat becomes unusable for the remainder of the term, while still being billed.
This creates a situation where prepaid value cannot be utilized, which is inconsistent with typical subscription expectations and makes it difficult to reconcile from a usage perspective.
BTW, your colleagues refused to process a billing adjustment for my case.
My team is experiencing the same issue, but after I removed and added people, the changes occurred on the 16-15-16th. A month later, I added one more person, making a total of 17. Another month later, when I tried to add the 18th person, I was told I had to pay. I paid for 18 people for a year, but now I’m using 17 people and still have to pay extra bills, and I haven’t even added the 18th person yet. My bill is #OEJISCJ1-0016
@Yang_Xinyu - sorry the billing team declined the adjustment. I’d recommend replying in the same email thread with the ticket to [email protected] and asking them to reconsider. Explain clearly that the seat was paid for a year, the user is being replaced, not added, and attach a screenshot from the [email protected] email where it mentions “flexible seat management”.
Your feedback about the mismatch between “flexible seat management” in the messaging and the system’s actual behavior is totally valid. The team is aware of the issue, but I can’t promise any timeline for changes yet. Your report helps us prioritize it.
@teamUser - I get the situation, and it’s the same issue we talked about above. When a user is removed and then a new one is added, the system treats it as adding a new seat, even if the number of active users didn’t actually increase.
Send an email to [email protected], include the invoice number, and describe the timeline: how many users you had, and when you removed or added each user. The billing team can check the account and apply a correction if you were overcharged.
@deanrie Hi Dean running into the exact same issue you described in this thread
Our situation: Annual Teams plan, 11 seats. Last week we did an email rotation to standardize on company emails, removed the non-company-email accounts before last month cycle end, re-invited the same people with company emails at this cycle start. Headcount stayed the same throughout.
The system charged us proration as if we’d added new seats, textbook “remove + add treated as add new seat”, exactly what you acknowledged on April 12:
“When a user is removed and then a new one is added, the system treats it as adding a new seat, even if the number of active users didn’t actually increase.”
“The billing team can check the account and apply a correction if you were overcharged.”
What I tried: Filed two tickets (T-C18804, T-C20112) and quoted your forum statements directly. Support replied with the standard proration policy and declined the manual correction — without addressing the system behavior you described.
One question I haven’t been able to get answered: since the removed accounts had used credits, their seats should remain billable until cycle end. If we re-invited those original emails back today, would they reoccupy the already-paid-for seats without triggering new proration? If yes, that confirms the new company-email invites should have been able to reuse those seats too — but I don’t want to test it and risk a fourth charge.
You mentioned earlier you could flag this internally if support doesn’t follow up — would really appreciate that
On the proration outcome for T-C18804 / T-C20112, those decisions belong to the billing team, and I can’t override them from the forum. If you want them to reconsider, the strongest move is to reply in the same email thread, attach the timeline headcount before and after, dates of removal and re-invite, and that the rotation was just an email format change with the same users, and explicitly ask for a manual review by a senior billing rep. Mentioning the flexible seat management wording from earlier [email protected] communication, if you have it, helps frame the gap.
On your re-invite request, would the original emails reoccupy the locked seats without new proration, I don’t want to give you a guess and have you eat a fourth charge on it. The billing team can see your actual seat state and confirm one way or the other. I’d add that exact request to your reply on the existing ticket before doing anything in the dashboard.
On the systemic side, yes, the gap between remove plus re-add same user and add net-new seat being treated identically is known, and reports like yours are what get it prioritized. I can’t promise a timeline on changes, but the feedback is logged.
I followed your suggestion and requested a senior billing manual review with the forum reference and full timeline. Unfortunately, the new request was automatically merged into the previous ticket, and billing has not given a substantive response for over a week.
It feels like the case has effectively been soft-rejected / treated as closed, even though the core issue remains unresolved. We’re a small startup customer, so I understand we may not have much leverage, but I’m not sure what else we can do through normal support.
Is there any way to route this to a senior billing reviewer manually? Not asking you to override billing — just hoping the known seat replacement gap can actually be reviewed by someone with authority.
Hey Yuki, sorry you got stuck in this situation. Auto-merging a new request into a ticket that looks closed, plus a week of silence, isn’t how this should work. I’ll raise this internally and ask the team to review your request. If it’s already been handled, please tell me.
To be direct, I can’t reverse the prorated billing decision from here, and I can’t promise the outcome will change. But I can make sure someone with the right permissions actually reviews the timeline you described, instead of leaving it auto-merged.
On your question about re-inviting users, meaning if bringing back the original email addresses will re-occupy the blocked seats without a new prorated charge, I still don’t want to guess. I’ll ask Billing to confirm this directly in their reply, so you have it in writing before you change anything in the admin.
I’ll reply here as soon as I have an update. We’ve also logged the system gap that you and others in this thread pointed out. F
