On-demand usage beyond a plan’s included budget should be priced at a discounted rate that reflects the user’s subscription tier, rather than a flat API rate for everyone.
The Ultra plan ($200/mo) gives you $400 of included usage. Effectively a 50% discount on API costs. However, once you exceed that $400 budget, on-demand usage kicks in at full API rates. That means the moment you need more than your plan allows, you lose the discount entirely.
The on-demand rate should reflect the discount tied to a user’s subscription. Subscribers should continue to benefit from a similar rate beyond their included budget, since they are already committed to an individual tier.
I don’t think you are paying for a discount, but a fixed amount of usage. Ultra just gives you a massive bonus for your money. This is common in marketing anything for sale, to give the best value for the largest volume purchase. Cursor’s benefit: higher steady money flow, maybe people won’t use it all, committed buyers who are more invested in their product, etc.
This is more of a request, instead of saying that the plans “should” be something, implying that there is something broken in how the plans work. But as we know from the history of Cursor’s pricing, they are probably not going to introduce anything that makes their product cheaper. It will likely go in the other direction.
Also it would be very hard for Cursor to gauge the value and cost of an Ultra plan if someone could use $400 API while someone else uses $5000 API calls. One is getting $200 discount, and the other is getting a $2500. This just seems insane to have this be the same product. I assume Cursor is not doing that because its not sustainable.
I wonder if you can buy two Ultra plans to maintain the discount further?
I would agree if it would be possible to get the same subscription double booked for the same timeframe.
It looks broken to me when a subscription offers you something for a month like “20x …” but only for the first $200 you invest, afterwards you have to pay the original price or wait for your cycle to reset
It offers you 20x of the $20 of usage you get with Pro ($400). There is no implying that you get API calls at 50% of the cost, with a minimum spending of $200 a month.
Pro+ is 3x of the $20 usage you get with Pro ($60), which just so happens to match the cost of Pro+ subscription, so its not much of a deal. Pro+ basically exists to make Ultra plan look like a better deal, which it is.
Where is the actuall subscription, when the “subscription” is only a package of credits/tokens limited to 30 days usage? What is the subscription feature after the credits are used?
Subscription: “the action of making or agreeing to make an advance payment in order to receive or participate in something.” It’s a subscription because you pay it every month. The subscription is whatever they say it is. You get access to Cursor IDE, unlimtied tab completions, and access to aip calls within the IDE. You are given a base usage credit. That’s it.
You are still paying for tab completion and to use cursor IDE with the on-demand usage or your own api keys you can add.
Cursor is not going to just give massive discounts lol. Everyone would use Cursor if it was an unlimited 50% off all API calls. Cursor hopefully is somehow getting the API calls from OpenAI or Anthropic less than 50% what they charge, and enough to cover their overhead and hopefully make a profit.
I’m sorry but you are not making any sense. Just admit you want costs to be cheaper, it would make more sense to just ask for this feature than to weirdly argue that it is somehow implied because its a “subscription” and Cursor is guilty of some false advertising.
Im on Ultra and i would also expect to continue at my discounted AI costs running on-demand afterwards.
Cursor should be able to negotiate better rates due to volume with AI Providers, so basically my on-demand purchase should add to that Bulk Purchase!?
Cause out of plan Usage is ridiculous!
Then make larger packages that have the discount built in… so $500, $600 etc
Otherwise remove all the different package levels and just have users buy Usage Packages or (Reoccurring monthly packages), this would make allot more sense. Then when I run out of my $400 package, i can topup with another package
100% agree, im not sure how people are using cursor at scale at the moment with these costs and usage rates. I can easily spend $150 via usage in a day using a model like 5.3 (not max).