For teams and users on usage-based pricing, Cursor is removing Max Mode from the model picker starting July 20. The same context-window sizes will still be available and can be selected directly in the model picker. No action is required.
I would like to understand the practical impact of this change.
From the email, it sounds like Max Mode itself is only being removed as a separate option or label, rather than the larger context windows being removed. After July 20, we should still be able to select the required context-window size directly when choosing a model.
However, I am unclear about the following:
Will the pricing and token usage remain exactly the same as Max Mode?
Will Cursor automatically select the appropriate context window, or must we configure it manually each time?
Could this affect existing agents, project rules, or long-running coding tasks?
Is there any difference in performance, reasoning quality, or usage limits after this change?
Does this apply only to usage-based plans, or will team plans also be affected differently?
Has anyone received more detailed information about this change or understood what it means in practice?
When Max Mode was first introduced, it was the only way to signal that you wanted a larger context window. Now that there’s another way to do this, Max Mode is no longer needed.
This change has no impact on pricing (the 20% upcharge for Max Mode was removed a few months ago for users on usage-based plans) and won’t affect the quality of your results. It’s just removing some now unnecessary complexity since you can now explicitly select model parameters.
Need a longer context window? Or Fast mode? Just select it in the model picker.
This change applies to all users on usage-based pricing. Legacy, request-based pricing keeps Max Mode as a way to opt into usage-based pricing for specific models.
So, not being able to disable MAX mode, we won’t know when our model selection will eat our monthly allotment of requests in one fell swoop?
It’s really hard to find a parallel in the real world of a person who won’t give an estimate of the cost before starting work, and you still have to pay if whatever they charged you for was a total hallucination… maybe lawyers? I know I can’t tell my boss “I’ll tell you what that feature cost after I’m done”, or a contractor whose estimate is “unbound, will give you the bill when done”.
Currently, with max mode disabled, it will at least tell me “Max mode required for your selection [as I’m going to chew through all your requests]”.
You should at least tell us which models to avoid now that you’re doing another rug-pull
